


A Sense of Commitment

by pettiot



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Action/Adventure, Backstory, Gen, Pastiche, skypirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-15
Updated: 2010-11-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 57,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23155486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: The Archadian Empire spreads itself thin fighting a war of conquest over numerous fronts. One such battlefield is the blockade around the pirate port of Balfonheim. Balthier and Fran are skypirates, partners and serial survivors. In their ancient airship, they regularly run the blockade, delivering much needed supplies to Balfonheim for a profit that makes the risk worthwhile.In a clash of empires, the Rozarrian Empire rises to Balfonheim's defense, involving Balthier and Fran in a war effort they have no desire to pursue.
Kudos: 1
Collections: Mega Flare! - A Final Fantasy Big Bang Challenge





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A Sense of Commitment was written in November 2010 for MegaflareFF, a Final Fantasy Big Bang Challenge asking for submissions over 20 000 words.
> 
> Set two years prior to the events in SquareEnix's Final Fantasy XII (FFXII), A Sense of Commitment details Balthier and Fran's whereabouts during the Archadian invasion of Nabudis.
> 
> Starring a cast of FFXII characters, the story is also a pastiche, following the dramatic plot structure of Callison's Trapp's War, a novel representative of the 'WWII military/action' genre - a schema that proved oddly well suited to FFXII's imperial collisions.

In pursuit of mercenary interests during an Imperial war, the skypirate pair known as Balthier and Fran expected to encounter the occasional military blockade.

Still, Balthier thought: two blockades were a bit extreme.

Via bluff and a profile so low they should have run aground, their antique Maenad had come through the Archadian part of this military blockade before. This time, however, the dismayed pilot and his navigator discovered the newest arrivals crimping their plans for greater profit: two Rozarrian Carriers blocked their way into Balfonheim's safe port, with a surrounding fleet of single-man Fighter Class airships.

Resigned, Balthier eased his chair flat. He took the opportunity to stretch the kinks from four hours of strain, shirt of soaked linen riding high over his belly.

With her knuckles, Fran pressed the ache from her eyes. Balthier felt urged to apologise for her wearied state, as if responsible. The sentiment was odd enough to dismiss out of hand, Fran no more needing his comfort than he did hers.

He turned his attention from the navigator herself to the navigator's console, the only contemporary interface in the Maenad's ancient dash. The Archadian array to their aft did not give an easy alternative for retreat from the Rozarrians to their fore. However, he decided, the Rozarrian Carriers offered far better odds, especially considering the profit when the Maenad reached Balfonheim on their other side.

Fran pointed to the Carriers, as if following Balthier's thought. 'We could change our colours to a Balfonheim flag. Call through—pass as the allies we are.'

'Announce ourselves?'

'We're not Rozarria's enemy. The truth does have its uses.'

Balthier distrusted the military, the Rozarrian presence a symptom of Archadia's aggressive designs, and not a cure. In this light, he added, 'Pure selflessness on the Rozarrians' part, I'm certain, moving to defend an independent port half a continent away.'

Which world-weary sneer Fran expected from her partner, who had long ago made obvious his scorn for matters Imperial.

He shook his head. 'One bloody Empire's the same as the other. Not forgetting, we declare to the Rozarrians, they'll assume possession of our cargo.'

Fran nodded: that as an argument made more sense from her partner than any allusion to Balfonheim's relative political freedom. Consisting of medical supplies, food, skystone and ammunition, they had stocked the Maenad with consideration for the market in a small town months besieged.

After a brief battle with the stiff lever, Balthier returned his seat to the upright. 'No, no announcements. We shall go dark again, and go in.'

This, the longest night, they had already spent navigating while dark, a dangerous low-powered flight beneath the sensors of the Archadian ships. It was a risk taken, measured against the relative gains of Balfonheim's desperate purchasers on the other side, the ability to rest safely, and soon. For Balthier to suggest the same tactic now, while he was exhausted, strained...

'What tactic does for one Empire will do for the other?'

He made a face. 'Insulting my reputation for innovation?'

They blinked at each other, Fran with a quizzical unconcern, Balthier with a tilt to his chin implying the question serious.

'Your reputation's safe with me.'

'Such a charmer, you are.' He grinned.

Balthier relayed his command down to the engine deck, where the two engineers rolled their eyes at each other. Nono responded with disgust, after which Sairo grabbed the comm., his amusement rattling through. 'Think you're up to the tightrope twice in one night?'

'I'm young. I'll survive.'

The Maenad's outdated mechanics wanted manual effort. Sairo and Nono took long moments to decrease the Mist to the airship's power lines.

Powered by Mist, glossair rings gave airships their speed and direction. Early in his piratical career, Balthier discovered the slower the rings spun, the less Mist they used—and it was Mist that made one airship detectable on another's display.

The Maenad went dark.

Not without consequence. For partial invisibility, the Maenad sacrificed stability.

The starlit serenity wanted to turn dire. Balthier found his adrenaline useless, fermented. His shirt already relegated to rags for his earlier efforts tonight, he blotted sweat from his eyes on a soggy sleeve. He had never ridden a bicycle across a slack rope, yet keeping the Maenad from a fatal tumble was an exercise in exactly that.

The Rozarrian Carriers had far fewer Fighters on patrol than the Archadian blockade, if less area to cover. Fran kept her eye on the display, but the patrol kept an easy distance with no evidence of breaking pattern. Deprived of practical reason to speak, she found herself searching for words that might skirt on encouragement.

Her own silence discomforted her. She avoided looking at Balthier's strain.

The engine deck was two levels below the cockpit, a mezzanine flanked by water reservoirs and overlooking the hold—both mezzanine and hold clouded with steam. Nono waded through the heat to reach the comm. Risk shy at the best of times, even when Balthier sought to convince him of the returns, Nono let the static blare his reproach. 'That's it, kupo. Left reservoir's boiled out. The lateral ring's like to stall.'

At the unexpected static blast, Balthier's skin had turned to ice. He took too long to respond.

'Acknowledged. Terminate.'

'You what, kupo?'

Sairo cut in, as incredulous as Nono. 'He's gone 12th Fleet again. You want us to switch it off?'

Fran urged herself to ease the rigid expression from Balthier's usually mobile features, but could not think of how. She touched his forearm, light. 'We can yet contact the Rozarrians. No shame but our egos.'

Blinking the sting from his eyes, Balthier felt keenly her lack of faith. 'Our egos? Switch the thing off, Nono!'

Nono swore. 'Even you can't keep us up on one ring.'

'Alright, keep it running, then. Stalling rings make such beautiful Mist patterns on Rozarrian detection sweeps.'

Trusting more in Balthier's daring than Nono did, Sairo disengaged the Mist flow to the lurching glossair ring. Begrudgingly, Nono confirmed their compliance with the skypirate duo above, and prepared himself for imminent disaster.

Balthier scarce breathed for fear they would topple.

Nevertheless, it seemed they might succeed.

Time passed, Balfonheim's familiar streets and coastal curves becoming obvious to the eye. Balthier soaked into his chair's threadbare upholstery. His inner ear crackled as they descended, while Fran, more sensitive, made a noise and rubbed at her skull, squinting against the pain.

Such familiar motions, Balthier felt prematurely relieved. It would end well. He rolled the hunch from his shoulders.

At that point, the sky ignited.

* * *

When young Archadian Ffamran Mid Bunansa joined the 12th Fleet, he intended it as a joke. He never wanted to fly to war.

Imperial Archadia's 12th Fleet operated under a specific brief: to contend with the threat posed by the Rozarrian Empire. Ffamran had picked the bad time in history to conscript.

For a long time, Archadia had governed itself and its territories with a sharp, if benign mercantile morality. It was a matter of hilarity to dynastic nations the Archadian Emperor won his throne on marketplace rule.

Archadia's merchant-to-military shift happened soon after Ffamran's father, Cidolphus Demen Bunansa, rediscovered the ancients' method of cheap flight.

It was some decades before Ffamran's birth. Cidolphus was a teenaged genius, curious of the aerodynamic fancies, ancient and rotting, wrecked throughout Ozmone Plain. Centuries past, a great battle had been fought in the skies, with airships which no one had seen since.

While the contemporary world knew flight, it came in the form of Moogle zeppelins. One of the world's many races, Moogles kept the secret of flight close to their furred chests. Their zeppelins, cumbersome and slow, moved between ground-based town and skyborne purvama on a schedule rarer than miracles, and at a cost beyond reach of most.

Unrelated to Moogle airships, the downed wrecks throughout Ozmone Plain were artistic, sculptural, and should not have been capable of flight.

As did his reference texts, Cidolphus ignored birds, wings and aerodynamics for the inexplicable: the natural phenomenon termed 'Mist'.

The dominant energy source, Mist used less resource and caused less expense than its forerunner, the ill-fated electricity. Mist occurred in every environment to a degree, harnessed by spellcasters to provide the energy needed to produce abrupt changes in localised conditions. A skilled spellcaster formed fireballs, pockets of ice and the like. One such effect elevated a single body—a brief spell of floating.

The spell never lasted for the extended periods necessary for commercially viable flight.

Cidolphus turned his study to magicite, a naturally occurring ore known to contain a high concentration of Mist. Cidolphus sought to define the mechanism through which magicite absorbed Mist into itself, thinking to apply the method on a large scale. The vast store of Mist would fuel a spell that would 'float' an airship.

Except he discovered his assumption flawed. Magicite did not absorb Mist. Magicite was Mist. Much as carbon became diamond, magicite formed when vaporous Mist was compressed at great heat and depth, over millennia.

Before a user could access the trapped energy, magicite's crystalline structure had to be rendered unstable. Cidolphus pioneered a method of transforming stable, non-reactive magicite into that unstable, volatile form. Magicite became skystone: a grade of unstable magicite with sufficient energy to sustain flight for weeks at a time.

Skystone provided flight to any body, cheaper, easier and faster than the Moogle zeppelins.

Following Cidolphus' revolutionary discovery, Archadia's geologists determined which landforms meant magicite deposits. Archadia's military then determined within whose national boundaries such landforms fell. Archadia's Senate, headed by the merchant Emperor, moved to ally, buy or conquer.

The Rozarrian Empire, military-minded, largest and oldest of Empires, did not appreciate the sudden addition of aerial scope to Archadia's army. Through counter-Archadian intelligence, they discovered for themselves the secret of flight, and engineered their own airship brigade.

In response to Rozarria's growing airship presence, the Archadian Emperor formed the 12th Fleet.

War was declared, fought and resolved. Then declared again.

Meanwhile, Cidolphus Demen Bunansa furthered his study of magicite, chasing rumours found within the texts of their ancestors. As often happened, Archadia's preeminent scientist found himself with three sons to three different researchers, while remaining ignorant of conventional marriage.

Ffamran Mid Bunansa was the third son.

Ffamran's passions involved guns, bikes and airships. Of the latter two, Ffamran's interest remained practical, his fondness for anything that would allow him to go fast and high. He showed no signs of the theoretical introspection his father encouraged. As the Bunansa family tree proved laden with fruity artists, inventors, geniuses and all-round eccentrics, Ffamran's conventionality was met with a patronising fondness, a decided air of humouring the boy.

As did most great Archadians, the Bunansa clan ran a merchant sideline—in their case, purely to fuel their alternate interests. Bewildered by his family's ambitions, Ffamran found order in the business's tallies: business offered definable gains, tangible goals. Ffamran knew when every Bunansa airship would launch, what cargo they held, their destinations, and what specialties they would be bringing back. He proved the ability to turn a profit from the least likely device bouncing, jangling, staggering or coalescing its way out of his parents' laboratory. Nevertheless, his relations mocked his absence of inspiration for so long that Ffamran forgot there had ever been affection behind the sting.

Ffamran did not find society much comfort against his family's scorn. The Bunansa clan's reputation opened the family's scions to gossip. Confronted with snide society peers, Ffamran discovered a temper that made him occasionally speechless.

The only possible comeback involved his fists.

The arrival of the fourth lawsuit pulled Cidolphus away from his latest pursuit, researching a magicite with potential to absorb Mist, without need for a millennium's worth of compression. Displeased at the disruption, Cidolphus took one brief interval, the details of which Ffamran fought hard to forget, to impress on his youngest the lives of violent mindless types had only two possible outcomes.

Prison was one.

Accordingly cliched, Ffamran Bunansa marched himself off to the other, and added his name to the 12th Fleet's lists in a fit of adolescent rage.

If Ffamran had thought his father might correct this horrendous state of affairs, he was wrong.

Yet Ffamran enjoyed the training. Military infrastructure provided him with the recognition his family had denied him. The boy's quickness, his fast reflexes, his inherent knowledge of the logic of flight and Mist, impressed his officers. His detailed understanding of airships saw him trained for aerial operations, giving him a knowledge of and responsibility for solo Fighter Class airships, in strike attacks, as well as Light Cruiser Class airships, working as crew.

Sped to a position above that of his peers, his officers pressured him to perform.

Ffamran's abilities, origins, and his somewhat fey features made him a priority target for his new peers.

But in the 12th, Ffamran's explosive violence merely served to win him medals, respect, and a reputation.

To further this, he gave himself a judicious buzzcut, adopted an air of off-kilter amiability, and believed himself set to enjoy a steady rise to any position he desired.

At which point, the Archadian-Rozarrian war was declared, again, and the 12th prepared for action.

The battle took place over Golmore, a jungle occupied by the insular and reclusive Viera. Beyond Golmore, Archadian geologists discovered a significant magicite lode, yet the Viera did not favour Archadia's aim to open a mine. Archadia's tries at alliance rebuffed, Archadia's first air-based approach should have annihilated the Viera, as the Viera did not have airships.

Rozarria did. While Rozarria withheld from mining foreign territories, they did not allow Archadia free reign over the world's magicite supply.

Ffamran found himself thrust into a well-equipped Draklor CB58 Valfarre Fighter Mark I, namedEnnessa, and directed to join the compliment of the 12th's flagship, the No. 1 Heavy Carrier Class Alexander. He was at war, if uncertain of why.

Within the week, sixteen-year-old Ffamran had effected his first long-distance massacre of civilians.

He also discovered his glorious future in ruins. His immediate superior had the wit of a dead leaf.

Ffamran's disillusionment was instantaneous.

Above the foreign jungle, months passed in military deadlock. Aboard the Carrier Alexander, Ffamran experienced mind-numbing boredom, peppered with the minor cruelties of soldiers denied action. Back firmly against the nearest wall, he plotted his desertion with an imaginative bent which would have impressed the more theatrical branch of his estranged family tree.

His plan would have worked, had the deadlock held.

In his last, tumultuous battle, a Rozarrian Fighter shot Ffamran's airship to ground.

Captivated by his approaching mortality, Ffamran did not remember his jettison, whether he used a parachute or a spellstone to preserve himself against the landing. Nor even of how he fouled his landing badly enough to break both his legs.

He woke to discover the world didn't care. Within arm's reach lay one corpse, and beyond, another soldier almost a corpse—both Rozarrian, Ffamran failed to notice.

After some time, he acclimatised himself to his own agony, and the sound of the dying Rozarrian.

The battle raged overhead. On occasion, a shower of debris disrupted the jungle's thick silences with crashes and cracks. Ffamran soon learned not to flinch. When the skies fell silent, whose victory he should celebrate remained a mystery, as the thick, sweaty jungle masked any upwards view.

The first night, Ffamran shivered himself unconscious. He woke retching, in rediscovery of pain.

Agonisingly, the ants arrived.

Scared by the sounds of war, the scavengers took three days to emerge.

Ffamran had six bullets left in his gun, three of which taught the scavengers the forever-dying Rozarrian, now Ffamran's stalwart companion, was tougher meat than expected. They appeased themselves with the dead Rozarrian.

Ffamran waited for someone to notice his absence, then realised he had no one.

The dying Rozarrian recovered, to an extent: he spoke a prayer. He asked for one thing, and after hearing it so many times over, Ffamran whispered with the soldier, cursing the unresponsive universe denying them rain. Ffamran licked the humidity from whatever lay within his shortened reach. He didn't know what the Rozarrian did.

The sound of running water made the thirst worse, from close enough that the mucky tree, dying man and scream-worthy heat seemed Ffamran's personal hell. Though Ffamran admitted conditions worse for the increasingly liquid Rozarrian, who refused to admit defeat.

At length, the man's prayer for water converted to a plea for death.

At which point, Ffamran wondered if he might also succumb to this lethal anonymity. Twas a disgrace, he told the Mist-thick air. He had been meant for more than this.

Courage was for the afraid, so Ffamran collected his practicality, and made a plan.

Before he left, he spared a bullet for his best friend the Rozarrian, who gazed up the dull grey muzzle with an indefinable expression.

'S-sorry.' Ffamran licked his lips, cocked the gun. 'Sorry for waiting so long.'

'Thank you anyway,' said the Rozarrian.

After that, Ffamran dragged himself in search of the running water. It took time, interspersed with dark periods.

The stream ran through a deep vertical gully. After the crawl, the drop-off came as a nasty punchline.

Desperate, Ffamran worked with the remnants of his upper body armour, gun belt and ammunition belt, and what shrubbery within reach, to create a bladder of air of sufficient buoyancy to keep him from drowning. That he would pass out on impact was undeniable. He tore his undershirt into strips, strapped himself to the bubble, and threw himself off the edge.

Consciousness returned in small and torturous doses. Ffamran drowned, caught, floated. Delirious, with sun on his face, skin mottled by leaves and leeches. The thirst left him, replaced by cold and terror. He woke in a bed, lungs afire, but his legs no longer rotting, nor festooned with bloodsuckers.

Regarded with impersonal scorn by two Viera salvemakers, Ffamran fought to stay silent through his delirium. While unwilling to war, the Viera had agreed to staff an impromptu hospital for their Rozarrian defenders. Here, Ffamran recovered himself.

On his second return to reality, the Viera queried his nationality and his name.

No Viera bore good will towards Archadians, but Ffamran knew his colouring too pale-skinned for Rozarria, too dark-haired for a citizen of the myriad midland nations. He introduced himself as Balthier, a Balfonheim mercenary, who had the misfortune of chartering with a skypirate who tried to profiteer from the flare-up war.

So mournful was Balthier's unfortunate tale the younger Viera's features softened in sympathy, her long, black-tipped ears a-tremble. Fluttering his lashes over fever-bright eyes, Balthier touched pale fingers to her cheek. With a sincerity that would have alarmed a fellow Hume with its intensity, he thanked her from the bottom of his humble soul.

He went to Balfonheim. Balthier's persona as an independent, blithely superior skypirate was so well crafted, it surprised him to discover his imaginary last charter had never existed.

He had surely survived the worst.

* * *

Even flying dark, the Maenad always risked the chance visual.

Fran raised her hand against the artificial dawn. The light destroyed their cover, whether it came as a magnesium flare or a spell. Heartbeat slowing after the original shock, she resigned herself to the loss of their cargo. Rozarrians fought by established rules of conduct, codified a century past by the monks at the Holy Mount. She had no reason to fear.

For all their days together, she could not have anticipated Balthier's reaction.

When the sky turned white, Balthier's first thought was not flare.

Under missile assault, an airship's shield glazed white when about to fail. Before deserting the 12th Fleet for his mercenary persona, Balthier had been conditioned for survival in such an event.

His vision flooded with white brilliance, he thought, simply enough: incoming!

And found himself in that nightmare sky of four years prior.

Forcing his damaged Fighter's exoskeleton to pirouette, graceful in its last moments, through the litter of metallic corpses, the Mist-trails of the likewise doomed, friend and foe alike, fragments carving flame through the sky, while salvos continued to rattle his bones, both ship and shell. A banshee missile shrieked his name.

Suspended over an obsidian jungle which would surely be his doom, he longed to close his eyes before the impact. Instead, his imminent dying transfixed him.

All this in a fragmented second.

'Balthier! Pull up-'

Balthier felt oddly distanced from his partner's call.

Via a static-loud comm., Sairo roared, 'Fran, full power, now kick him or pull us up!'

The Maenad surged to full life. The cockpit lights blazed on, surpassing the exterior's imposed hellish glow. The blackness in Balthier's eyes receded to a blind pinpoint: a metaphysical jolt, Fran saw. It did more for him than she had.

Blood boiling, Balthier immediately took gut-wrenching evasive action, both from the proximal earth and an imagined missile.

Which was no longer strictly imaginary.

The Rozarrian Fighter expressed its interest in the dirty, limping old airship with a friendly flare, then assumed the worst when the ship descended on a suicidal path towards Balfonheim. The Rozarrian Fighter pilot fired the missile in defence of the port. Balthier's evasive action took the form of an upwards haul, which brought the Maenad into the missile's path sooner than expected.

The missile sliced through the Maenad's inferior shield, into one side of the ancient ship and, astoundingly, out the other. The paper-thin state of the old alloy hull saved them from immediate annihilation.

Fran's hand closed around Balthier's forearm. Coming back to her more than himself, he met the navigator's eyes. Her brows arched, sorrowful.

She tightened her hold. 'With you not by me now, should I believe the worst?'

Balthier remembered. He had promised her, the leading man never dies.

The Rozarrian Fighter's next barrage sent fragments spiralling into the night.

* * *

Had Cidolphus Bunansa not discovered skystone when he did, Fran would never have divorced the Wood.

Or perhaps she would have. Distance, its glamour, had always captivated her.

Born deep within the Golmore Jungle, Fran left Eryut Village long before skystone's discovery. Reclusive by nature, Viera lived separate from the world outside, shunning even their own kind but for when necessity required it. The isolation allowed the Viera to hear the spirit voice of the Wood, an incarnation of the jungle's awareness.

Before she left, Fran scarcely even considered what difficulty her departure might cause herself. The longing to travel struck her like a restless twitch, a physical need to move a limb kept motionless.

Much later, she reflected that she could have resisted the urge, had she the desire.

Fran explored urban comforts and mortared hells, learned terms like 'national policy' and 'political freedom;' she met, married, murdered, all before Cidolphus Demen Bunansa's birth.

Between episodes of her life, Fran visited Eryut Village with the same unselfconsciousness with which she had left. She noted her sisters staring, the vague withdrawal of the other Viera from her presence, but did not react. In a hammock, cradled by breeze and familiarity, she wondered what drew her to return to this place she yet called home. If easing cramped limbs drew her outwards, did a fear of overextension call her back?

Fran moved through the outside world with the detached pleasure of an anthropologist. She had no want to be a part of her observations, but found a fundamental pleasure in making them. She carried the habit of observation into her own home village.

Her return visits grew rare. Nevertheless, Fran kept an oddly parental urge to protect Eryut's chosen isolation, the village a perfect relic of itself. In part, Eryut's isolation and segregation came as a physical necessity: Mist affected the Viera more than the other races, causing violent, sometimes lethal physical reactions. For generations, Viera chose to live in areas with lower concentrations of Mist, locales as rare and isolated as those with high concentrations of Mist.

Isolation bred itself.

Yet Eryut Village, out of many Viera communities, was deeply insular. So engaged with its own self-developed cultural restraint that belief in the corrupting influence of Mist had become fanatical. The other races had long since integrated the use of Mist into their lives, a means to an end. Fran learned to do so, too. Outside the Wood, Mist use could not be avoided.

If trace guilt returned each time Fran stepped within the Wood's bounds, as Mist-user, unclean, she banished it with the promise of a fresh horizon, wind in her ears, the purchase of fresh leathers, tailor-made and striking.

One particular day, a lifetime away from Eryut, Fran saw an airship take to the sky. The odd shape caught her eye: no cumbersome zeppelin, this airship rose at a speed in defiance of its shape.

Aerodynamics contributed little to the design of Archadia' first airships. The earliest models resembled their oceanic cousins, complete with sails as wings.

Instinctively Fran knew: the improbably shaped airship could not have sailed the skies without Mist involved.

A fierce desire for all things taboo filled Fran to the brim.

Forbidden yet flaunted, lethal. Mist-winged fancies filled her dreams. Then, her days.

She would not return home.

When Fran chartered with the airship on which she would meet a young, grasping Balthier, she had well over fifty years of experience of survival in a world where airships flew. She had made her own way as a hunter, warrior, mercenary, skypirate and profiteer. More importantly, she knew everything worth knowing about airships.

Despite Balthier's youth, that flight together showed they shared a suitable ethic. Over far too much whiskey and not enough supper, they expounded on a love of airships and freedom. For Balthier, airships provided a method of upholding his independence. For Fran, life aboard an airship proved that she preserved her freedom from ingrained stricture.

When Balthier first arrived in the pirate port of Balfonheim, his own survival drove him. In his first unfruitful days on the street—similar to Fran's first days in the derelict shanty town the port had once been, it would have intrigued him to know —Balthier realized that his continued survival required acquisition.

He was greedy. For life, not that he recognised it. Sublimating, he instead began to acquire.

Acquisition provided one with choices, choices increased the odds of survival, and Balthier intended to live forever.

A year playing hunter and mercenary gave Balthier enough profits to enter the Balfonheim market. He learned which goods were in scarce supply, and gained such goods by sword or secrecy. He invested in training and a better armoury, which allowed him to try dangerous hunts with smaller parties, netting higher earnings from the sales. He picked up a wardrobe fit for a pirate king, aware of costume's importance in the success of a role. Clad in leather, linen and lace, he grew enamoured of his own invulnerability. He developed a belief that he was the star of his own story, a rakish leading man who loved many and respected few, destined for horizons and never the ignoble death.

He survived a year without the sky, until the loss grew paramount.

In an alley off the quayside harbour, Balthier applied judicious force to create an opening in the five-bodied crew of the Gerai. Within six months, and with the unexpected aid of the airship's navigator and chief engineer, Balthier effected mutiny.

The Gerai came as stylized as early airships could come, designed for sea and not for sky. A recognisable airship was not a good choice for a theft, yet Balthier enjoyed daring the likelihood of failure. Each time he survived, he reinforced his invulnerability.

Yet daring did not mean stupidity. He removed the airship's identifying marks, renamed it the Maenad, and docked at Balfonheim's aerodrome without fuss.

The change in leadership pleased Fran. Skypirates of late had turned to a code lacking the morals of their predecessors, becoming little more than skyborne cutthroats, monster-hunters turned to murders in lust for money. But Balthier flew by the old code. He divided loot fairly, with bonuses for those wounded in hunts or feuds. The Maenad flew as a charter, a company, each member with shares in the ship. Except in times of war or battle, Balthier assured his tiny crew his leadership would be the voice that called them to vote on decisions, not the hand that demanded obedience.

Common enterprise united Balthier and Fran, discovery of each other's competence cutting across the usual boundaries of nationality and race.

Disinclined to share with each other either pasts or traumas, they nevertheless developed a rapport Fran appreciated. If she played the detached anthropologist, a voice from the wings, Balthier claimed the spotlight as the chameleon tourist.

Without much debate, the skypirates kept Balfonheim as their home port. The lively self-balancing chaos of the place had always intoxicated Fran, even when the streets had been mud, the harbour filled with sails, and the aerodrome but a single dock for a Moogle zeppelin. With good humour, Balthier scorned the provinciality of the streets, but Balfonheim's marketplace government appealed to the certain aspects of Balthier's persona.

Of the many cities and towns within Archadia's borders, only the pirate port of Balfonheim remained possessed of the mercantile attitude which had made Archadia a world power—for a long period, merchant and pirate were synonymous.

In Balfonheim, anyone who could afford it was a king.

Not quite self-crowned, the fighting proud Viera and lean, lace-clad Hume blended into Balfonheim's chaos when alone, but remained notable as a pair.

They spoke no vows to each other, nor made formal alliance. After taking the Maenad, Balthier let Fran know he would appreciate her closeness. Her partnership, if she would. There would be benefits, he told her. His destiny was to survive.

* * *

Out of habit, Balthier did not doubt they would survive this current attack.

Fran, too, had learned to rely on his infallibility.

The missile strike below hit a critical conduit. The lights flickered, the cockpit left with no more light than the ugly orange emergency glow. The window exploded inwards, heralding the Rozarrian boarding squad's entrance. Three Rozarrian gunners landed, ropes hissing away from gloved hands, the sudden influx of air blasting Fran's fine white hair into her eyes. Balthier hauled her from her chair in that moment of vulnerability, after which they stood by the ladder, in readiness to descend.

The Rozarrians forestalled their exit. 'Weapons down, hands high! Weapons down, hands high!'

Fran shook pebbled glass from her hair, ears flicking. Balthier caught Fran's eye and shrugged, insolent.

In that brief moment, they debated the likelihood of resurrection.

The Rozarrian boarding squad fired a warning round—if too late, as the Maenad keeled to one side. Having heard the whine before the ship canted, Fran curled into the descent, grabbing Balthier's forearm. With her free hand, she latched onto the ladder. Balthier returned her grip. The Maenad levelled out, and they moved with it, into the ladder's shaft, descending in a swift manner akin to a partially arrested fall.

Scarce seconds later, in retreat as another squad member leaped from the forward commons, a shell exploded into the hold. The ship's spin saved them again, levelling as a member of the boarding party took control of the helm.

Despite their evasions, when the skypirates reached their nearly horizontal engine deck, the Rozarrian military had repossessed the Maenad. A cohort of twelve kept a solid guard around the skystone. Nono scowled at them, his empty paws spread wide.

Prodded by guns from behind, Fran raised her hands in a similar sign of surrender. Balthier followed, reluctant, until he reminded himself that surrender could be considered an alternate form of survival.

Losing this ship would dent him, he realised.

Long-nailed fingers laced at her nape, Fran's downcast eyes saw Sairo first. Nono caught her raised eyebrow and shrugged, helpless. He turned a wary glance to Balthier and drew the pilot's attention down.

Sairo had been shot, terminally.

The pain of losing his ship shifted into a worse ache. Balthier met the engineer's glassy stare and found it reproachful.

Guilt rose, a tide in the skypirate's chest. Balthier always survived. Those who rubbed their shoulders with him should have been awarded the same indignity.

Blackness, ruin impendent, overwhelmed Balthier with a list of drastic measures. In his skypirate career, unlike his abbreviated military service, he had taken precautions to avoid excessive death, and the murder of sentient beings. The unexpected appearance of a fatal flaw within his own crew suggested that Balthier was but a heartbeat from returning to the rank and monstrous jungle, lurking behind his mind's eye.

Inexpertly, the Rozarrians removed the skystone from the Maenad's's antiquated core. Their mishandling caused showers of brilliant sparks. Sairo's eyes had last sparkled like that lying in a grassy field on a carefree day, his shoulder against Fran's, taking apart an antique gun to Balthier's lazy instruction. They had been well fed, rich and lightly oiled, enjoying their well-funded freedom in a string of perfect days.

Balthier fought the black wave, and for a moment, lost.

It almost wasn't worth it, life.

Mist backwash burst free from the skystone, clarifying matters with a brief, magnesium-bright surge, leaving the ship in comparative blackness.

Balthier shuddered away the image behind his mind's eye, of his own frozen death. He was not going to die. He was selfish, incapable of the last act of jettisoning everything, nationhood, pride, expectation, life.

The deck vibrated as the Rozarrians pulled free the stone. One of the Rozarrian Carriers caught the Maenad in her own Mist-field, tugging the ship into the internal dock. Time for the leading man to do anything imaginative had ended.

Fran stood firm against the vibration, but Balthier went to his knees, hands curved around his skull. He swallowed, hard, when Sairo's head bobbled with the motion.

Nausea. Certainly not anything sentimental.

Balthier caught Fran's steady eye and saw himself reflected; reflecting, as he rose to his feet, on how essential his partner had become to ensuring he remained himself. Living his role, Balthier needed the accountability of having an audience.

The Maenad tilted to an even keel, then to a halt.

The hatch lowered, a gangway raised, the boarding party increased. No one gave permission for the skypirates to lower their hands. Only Nono worked, preventing the Rozarrians from causing more damage to the antique engine and the skystone.

If Balthier and Fran formed their unspoken alliance based on common desires, Nono partnered the airship herself, going wherever the Maenad flew. An emphatic glance from the Moogle told Balthier that Nono preserved the ship in expectation of an eventual bid for freedom, which Balthier would, and must, pursue on their behalf.

Faith, Balthier recognised.

At Balthier's side, Fran's long lines matched his own, a stance of lazy caution, prepared to sink into the tooth and nail fight that Balthier's next move could trigger.

It was his own little Empire, in a way.

A fierce, protective affection surged in Balthier. To think, he had thought affection inconsistent with survival.

Masked and effective, the Rozarrian soldiers directed the pair out of the hatch, at gunpoint. In the Carrier's massive, bustling hold, further armed Rozarrians stood at attention, prepared for any eventuality.

This, Balthier could deal with. The leading man mantled himself in a matching arrogance.

Fran felt his stance change, recognised the arrogant set to his shoulders. 'Delightful.'

Looking sidelong, Balthier raised an eyebrow.

Gracious, Fran inclined her head at the assembled military. 'The adoring, much trouble they might be, step out to stand in our presence.'

'Gentle and trembling though they are.'

Fran's lips curved with satisfaction at the vast numbers of those not privileged to be within their circle.

The skypirates lowered their arms, and ignored every muzzle that threatened to bark.


	2. As Little As A Look

When a Rozarrian dropped a piece of food, on picking it up they would kiss it, before discarding it as fouled.

It had been years since I had lived in Rozarria. Seemingly my mind recalled this custom now as an indirect reference to my fate, in shackles before the door to the Rozarrian HQ. So had I fallen, in one of many misfortunes befalling the nameless agents of the Rozarrian Empire. So had my lord Margrace chosen now to lift me from sweet anonymity. I should expect no more than a kiss before my end.

Having no alternative, I went in.

Windowless, yet lit over-bright, the Rozarrian force had converted the hall to an operations room, the space consumed by a large table spread with maps of Balfonheim, its skies and surrounds. A funereal quiet radiated from the officials by the table, Archadia's triumph a forgone conclusion.

At the end of the hall stood a partition, behind which, three of the Whitecap's scarred barroom tables served as a desk, the sole tribute to a commander's rank in this besieged port.

There, my sworn lord stood facing a secondary campaign map, pinned to the board. Margrace hummed as he studied the state of affairs, fingers interlocked and pressed to his lips. As far as I saw, he hemmed his cheer in direct contradiction to what the map communicated.

I glared at the back of Margrace's head, then turned my attention to the Rozarrian High Marshal, grey curls hung in oiled disorder, seated at the desk. Epaulettes drooped on shoulders sloping as the hills.

The High Marshal also ignored me, until I rattled my shackles. He came aware of my presence with obvious distaste.

'Ha! They found you, for what it's worth.'

Margrace turned, graceful. 'In Balfonheim everything has a price. To have a price, a thing must have some worth.' He addressed the soldiers at my flanks. 'Remove her restraints, if you will. Then you will be dismissed.' Modest, he held out his hand, palm up, to the High Marshal. 'If my orders meet with your approval, of course?'

The Empire's intelligence agents were subject to high military command, even in a field of war. But Al-Cid Margrace was a son of the Emperor, a forbidden nobility in this, his chosen role.

I grimaced. The dance between rightful command and Imperial right to command continued, much as it had in the years I served my lord Margrace. In his crisp blue satin shirt, unlaced to the navel, Margrace looked tanned, fit, young, impossibly healthy next to my memory's shades—and compared to the High Marshal's slump, Margrace's stance suggested himself in command.

Knowing Margrace, I forgave the High Marshal his clenched fists, the glare suggesting me to blame for irritating Imperial presence. The Marshal nodded his grudging agreement.

No more generous in their obedience, the soldiers released my hands from behind my back, ungentle. I worked aching shoulders, and hastened their departure with a sneer.

Margrace walked to place his hands on the High Marshal's shoulders, who startled upright at the touch and jerked away.

'My gratitude for your support to the department during this time of turmoil.'

The Marshal dusted his shoulders, eying Margrace suspiciously. 'Much support, causing much disturbance.'

Margrace made the mudra of acknowledgement and debt with his left hand. 'My little birds are well-instructed to fly home. Unfortunate it is when one wants guidance.'

The High Marshal glared at me again, and moved past the partition to merge with the war table officials.

Was he serious? Rising out of the dark of this day's morning, Archadia had broken their own blockade and attacked. Yet in a fit of resentment, Margrace demanded the Rozarrian military turn over half of the pirate port to find one fugitive agent?

The arrogance was like him, at that.

'What do you want?' I asked Margrace. 'You simply couldn't let me die free when Archadia takes this port?'

'Was it so bad, my little bird? That you had to run away from me, giving no word of your survival?'

Not what I had expected, now, nor from him. 'Yes.'

He made the mudra of appeasement. 'Your position was essential to our needs—'

'You weren't there. I had two choices, run or die.'

'I never believed you dead,' Margrace said, after a moment. 'I've been looking for you since.'

'Further wasting Imperial Rozarria's resource. Had you nothing better to do with your time?'

'Ah,' he grinned, shrugged, 'well. I searched between other tasks, in locales occasioning my other business. Such as here. Who imagined you would return to the town from where I had plucked you from obscurity? My agents are not so predictable as to return home.'

Margrace did not take the abandoned Marshal's chair, his eyes dark behind his glasses. I knew him well of old. Behind his words and grace simmered his old, possessive hunger.

'I am not yours to pluck any longer.'

'Your desertion merits death,' he said, blunt.

'My gratitude for the reminder.'

'Are you so pleased to die?'

'Freely, yes. In a battle, for certain. But for your Empire? Not at all.'

'Not your Empire any longer, I see.' He shook his head. 'You have changed, to think your death would do more than waste even the gravedigger's time. Only cowards choose to drown where the gallant brave the storm.'

A rising babble among the war room operatives interrupted my retort.

Of course, I listened.

The Fighter Class fleet associated with the Rozarrian Carrier Gulbahar had fallen. Of the Carrier Parvaneh, the Fighters flew in retreat, overwhelmed, for the sanctuary of the Carrier's hold.

'The Archadian storm.' Margrace pointed to the campaign board. 'Breaking on cue. I yet believe Archadia will not take Balfonheim.'

'Good for you.'

Margrave gave me a pained look. 'You think you have been called to account for your desertion. Yet, my little bird, your record does not state you deserted your last post. Rather a commendation is due for demonstration of initiative in stationing yourself in Balfonheim, before the Archadian intent to blockade this town. We have no other operative so well positioned. Your record also lauds your ability to independently finance your cover within this sunlit, salt-rimed free port.'

He lowered dark glasses, awarding me a glimpse of his Imperial blues. He looked me up, from heeled boots to where silk scarce tamed my curl, and over the limited cover of my Balfonheim leathers, pearls and lace between.

'So few of my birds have done so well with so little.'

No one had ever called Margrace subtle in his intentions towards women.

Yet with him, even the blatant became another mask. He sought to buy my involvement for some purpose of his own. I reminded myself, I did not want to return to service with Rozarria.

'If I disagree with your assessment of my actions?'

'Your insubordination would be but another mark beside your desertion.'

Buy, or threaten.

Margrace added, 'In such circumstance, it will be necessary to enforce the non-disclosure clause on fugitive agents.'

'Which equates again to a death sentence.'

'Do not think this free port will protect you.'

My anger, never well constrained these days, flared. 'Balfonheim won't turn me out, even if you do name me an Imperial fugitive.'

'Of course not. Criminals find refuge here, including those of morals that do not align with yours. Balfonheim brims even now with those criminal who would oblige Rozarria, simply for the posted reward. Do not expect favours repaid, friendships called in, protection offered in exchange for your contribution to the community, so-called as it is.'

I had no regret for throwing my lot in with pirates and thieves. Only a dull despite for Margrace using what I had come to value as weapon against me.

'Give me my commendation, then. You have my commitment.'

'Wholehearted?' He said it sharply.

I curled my lip. 'If you insist on enthusiasm, I'll fake it for you.' Indicating the operations room, alight with news of Rozarria's downed ships, I added, 'Not that my enthusiasm could affect chance where those better men could not.'

'You believe our defensive efforts in vain?'

Sullen, I offered, 'As long as the paling holds, and Archadia does not move in force, the two Carriers contribute much to the defence. But for how long—three months, perhaps?'

Margrace waved me to silence. 'Three months.'

'It means little enough here. Have you even looked at the streets? There's not the food, the weaponry, nor the willpower to run a defence if Archadia comes directly.'

'Were you aware of what occurred when our Rozarrian Carriers arrived?'

Weeks ago, now. When the Rozarrians arrived, old instinct led me to abandon my industry and hide. Yet Balfonheim under blockade did not offer many boltholes: I emerged due to hunger, always close in these days of the blockade, to discover Balfonheim reconstructed.

The Rozarrians brought grain and like essentials—luxuries, too. Pineapple. Chocolate. Coffee. Starvation had made thieves of us, but with the arrival of the Rozarrians, the looting eased. I discovered the streets almost ordered again, empty of scavengers, mobs, the hungry and weak returned to what nooks they called home.

Rozarria won their way through Balfonheim's paling with food. Initially welcoming the relief, Balfonheim turned suspicious of Imperial Rozarria's involvement when the Carriers disgorged their military compliment into the port. The soldiers and officials spread through Balfonheim, assuming effective Imperial control—temporary only, the High Marshal insisted, despite his slump obviously a fast enough talker to convince the various pirate cohorts and motley crews of Rozarria's sincerity.

Balfonheim's citizens believed in liberty, not order—individual freedom never sacrificed in the name of law. Nevertheless, the port was aware of the threat of Archadian annihilation. When of my capture, fights between Balfonheimers and the Rozarrian soldiers had not developed to more than scuffles.

Yet the tension stayed trigger-tight.

Margrace saw the knowledge in my face, even as I nodded. 'The Emperor intended the Carriers as a single aid convoy. A quick entrance and drop, followed by a swift departure. All else since then has been improvised.'

'Why are you still here?'

'The Emperor cannot spare further military force on what is a non-allied township.' He spread his hands, a helpless affectation. 'We cannot get out.'

The admission surprised me.

'The blockade was more—shall we say, total—than our intelligence led us to suspect. Near impossible to surpass, as the High Marshal realized too late, our Carriers too committed to withdraw.'

I laughed. Rozarria made such an effort to appear the benign influence, the Imperial salve to the other Imperial blight. Of all ironies, to be caught by overextension. 'So you're stuck here with the rest of us dock-rats.'

'You note the humour in the situation, my little bird. Today, you and I are on this flotsam raft, caught in a chilling Archadian storm. You call it home, I call it no alternative. Nevertheless, neither of us intend to drown. Therefore,' he said, pointedly, 'the need for your enthusiasm.'

'Oh, offer me a raft and I'll not be striking for shore on my own. For as long as your intentions towards survival are honourable.'

'Honourable, as always. If not necessarily opaque.'

Again, I experienced the distrust, lethal as the despair and betrayal, which had nearly claimed my life two years ago.

'You're asking me to trust you.'

'Will you?' he asked, quietly.

Yes. 'No!'

'Ah,' Margrace said, sadly. 'But will you talk with me? Work with me?'

'Yes.' How miserably engrained it was, to responded to his expectation. 'For as long as your intentions remain—'

'Honourable. Of course.'

Only then did Margrace sit in the High Marshal's well-padded chair. 'Facts, my little bird. The Archadian blockade extends between Balfonheim and the skycity of Bhujerba.'

'Yes.'

'It is a total blockade,' he added.

'So it seems.'

'Only with intense effort, and loss of life, were two Rozarrian Carriers and a full compliment of Fighter Class airships able to break through the blockade.'

'To find they could not risk getting back out again,' I felt the need to reiterate the instability of his position.

His lips quirked. 'Quite. So we agree, then, Balfonheim is isolated and set to starve?'

'Not even a sailboat could coast under the blockade.'

'So. Our first honourable if somewhat opaque conversation completed without incident. Now for the first true query, my little Balfonheim bird: tell me how, then, an unarmed airship—of a type so antiquated it near runs on coal—can make regular deliveries of luxuries beneath the notice of the same Archadian blockade that crushed the best drop-squad Rozarria could offer?'

I shrugged. 'Rhetorical question, I assume?'

'Not at all. You do know of the airship?'

I said, slowly, 'I didn't know.'

'How unfortunate. For the airship's pirates, not for you. They have led me to believe their reputation surmounts the sky, their infamy knowing no bounds. Perhaps it should not. They have affected both survival and marked profit around this,' he waved his hand through a graceful arc, 'slight inconvenience we shall call a war.'

I continued without enlightenment.

'Yet no recall? The name has a historic origin, near as aged as the airship itself. The Maenad, the skypirates call it—'

'Oh, no. Those lunatics.'

He arched a dark eyebrow at me.

'Balthier and Fran,' I elaborated.

My obvious distaste made Al-Cid Margrace smile, broad enough to bare his teeth.

* * *

For performing heroic actions in the name of profit—that long dishonoured honourable cause—the Maenad was docked in disgrace.

A port town long before the prevalence of airships, an extension of the original sea-ship docks served as Balfonheim's aerodrome. Stone and wood piers thrust out along the coastal curve, radial sun-spokes of an accidental rhythm, each one leading to the lowered gangways of airships at rest.

Her skystone confiscated to prevent precipitate departure, the Maenad had been tugged into place, and now wallowed at the dock furthermost from Balfonheim town itself, near to where the sewers spread slick effluence across the ocean's calm.

At the quayside end of the Maenad's dock, Balfonheimers gathered to jeer. The Maenad's dirt-dark hull would benefit from a short sharp shower, had Balfonheimers enough eggs to let them rot.

The hostility was not especially malicious, fuelled by boredom of another endless suspension of the hostilities above. The Maenad, once a subtle saviour depositing goods in bordering coves, had been outed in her role as blockade-runner. Enough humiliation for a skypirate to have been caught by foreign authorities, this time the Maenad offered no cargo. The absent providence contributed to the jeers of the crowd.

If Balfonheim had known what I knew about the Maenad, what would they have done?

Margrace had enlightened me before sending me out. A Rozarrian Fighter Class had intercepted the Maenad, which immediately began evasive manoeuvres. A warning missile had been fired, damaging the Maenad, even as engagement and capture advanced to plan.

On seeing the night sky lit by flare and fire, the upcoming Archadian patrol assumed their last sweep under attack. They moved a portion of their force against the Rozarrians, in retaliation.

Yet neither Rozarria nor Archadia wished to war with each other. Not yet, while the victor was uncertain. Margrace predicted the battle would remain a skirmish, a testing of each other's dedication to holding this independent pirate port. So had Archadia and Rozarria avoided full war for decades, other nations the rope in their game-of-tug.

Rozarrian soldiers loitered about the airship's dock, both among the jeering crowd and watching it. Protection for the Maenad, I suspected, should the crowd turn violent.

Dutifully blank-faced, the Rozarrian soldiers were displeased to be so assigned. They likely knew the Maenad's role in their skyborne comrades' defeat. Among the jeers tossed in the airship's general direction, the Balfonheimers generously spared wit and bile for the soldiers.

Perhaps the Rozarrians would be the ones to break, and throw the first bottle. While the Balfonheim residents, however cruel in their current mockery, would immediately rally to arms to defend one of their own against the Imperial interlopers.

Despite everything, it was a beautiful summer's day in Balfonheim, of brisk breeze and enjoyably crisp warmth.

With a short punch to the ribs of a stocky mariner blocking my way, I worked through the crowd to the stern line of soldiers. A lieutenant's steady gaze met mine, blank. To him, I was but another Balfonheimer, come to mock.

With an odd feeling of satisfaction, I withdrew my recently restored credentials, and filled the lieutenant's vision with Margrace's stamp of authority.

Blinking at me with clear disbelief, he let me pass.

I had not forgotten about the audience. Catcalls and cheers followed me down the long dock, provocative enough, even for Balfonheim, that I gave a few incredulous glances back at the crowd.

In this way, I came to the Maenad's gangway.

Small for her era, but huge compared with contemporary cargo ships, the Maenad was twenty years old, from a decade when airships followed in form and function their seagoing cousins. Considering the inefficiencies of early Mist systems, the Maenad would devour skystone at an impossible rate. A miracle that even skypirates ran her at profit.

To do so while evading the Archadian blockade? Here the impossibility wallowed.

I surveyed the damage. Loss of glazing, several areas of dented, scorched hull due reinforcement, a tidy hole thicker than my waist cut in perfect alignment through both sides of the hull. I climbed the gangway to the hatch.

My knock rang hollow and ignored.

Salted by the crowd's mockery, I made my way around to the engine deck, level with the dock itself, where a full panel had been removed from the hull to efficiently service the damaged reservoir. I jumped the gap and boarded, and, in the comparative darkness, paused to blink my eyes into focus.

What I saw of the Maenad's engines made me cringe.

I took up a fragment of scorched iron from the deck, and announced myself vigorously on the ductwork. 'Hoy! The ship!'

From the depths of the empty hold, a young man emerged, tall and lean. He climbed the ladder to the engine deck with an air that, while lazy, gave the impression of conserving his energy for better things, possibly of a more horizontal orientation.

He swung himself up into the sunlight streaming through the open hull. Then, hip propped against a ship's rib, he folded his arms at me and lowered his brows.

What clothing remained to him, leather trews of an Archadian military cut, a finely embroidered shirt hung open, and a transparent undervest, appeared several days worn and grimed with himself and with soot and scorch. His jaw clenched. From the sun-darkened face, clear eyes, slightly squinted, took my measure and found me wanting.

'Balthier. I want to talk to him.'

Lips pursed in disapproval. Then he glanced away, as if disinterested. 'How easily gratified you are. Now bugger off, whatever you are.'

The young man spoke the former in the tones of the Archadian upper class, the latter, in a street-rich drawl.

My day began with being run down, followed by a fight for my life, several hours in shackles, only to find myself again at the puppet end of Margrace's strings. The brat's affectation irritated me.

I offered Margrace's authority with a move more suited to a blade.

The young man rolled his eyes. 'Mine's bigger.'

'I'm here to decide if this relic is due to be retired. If you're worth your berth, you'll run to fetch your mister before I recycle this hulk for Rozarria.'

I regained the young man's eyes. Hunched shoulders developed a level of tension, his nostrils flared. I prepared to engage.

Yet he surprised me, as a thought occured. A twinkle grew in his eye, and those ugly lips turned themselves into a smile making him cheerfully, if treacherously, approachable.

'I know of the Margraces, and their little birds. So there's one in this mess too, is there? Odd uniform for an agent.' He let his gaze linger. 'Sundries run out of trousers, birdie?'

I narrowed my eyes, discomforted. Piratical ego and pure capitalism demanded a display of exoticism and confidence, for status. I had been born to Balfonheim streets before Margrace's sphere had claimed me. Years, then, had been lost training in Rozarria, serving in Rozarria, where exposure was the right of the male aristocracy. I chose my dress now in deliberate insistence I had never been gone.

'I've been undercover.'

'As what, a Balfonheim fortune-teller?' The grin became a smirk. 'A delightful boss you have, Feathers.'

'Better than being an airship's rudder slut. Now go mince off to wherever your mister's hiding himself. I want to speak to him.'

Boneless, the maddening brat settled himself against the hull and grinned.

As I made to broach the ship's interior, someone descended the central ladder. The shaft revealed an impressively figured Viera, tall enough even without the ears to need to bow past the threshold, inches taller even than the young man. Oiled black leather, supple and tight, presented notable assets in stark relief: the tense muscles of her abdomen, the powerful thighs, the sinewy-strong arms. Wide-set eyes took me in, her face serene, impassive.

After which scrutiny, she focused on the young man.

'The entire intake mechanism will need a replacement.'

'That's what Nono says, does he?' The young man made a face. 'He'll have to do better than that.'

The Viera twitched an ear at the ladder. 'So he comes. Argue with him.'

'Oh,' said the young man, fervent, 'I will.'

She settled herself on her haunches, elbows on knees with the idle grace of a fighter, in control of every muscle. She returned her study to me.

So, that was Fran.

Her reputation preceded her. Somewhat of a Balfonheim legend, with Viera longevity on her side, Fran circled Balfonheim's spheres of influence for decades, being most memorable for an unparalleled performance within a less-than-savoury fighting ring, where she earned the title Master of Weapons. But reputation did not suggest the physical presence, the sensation of nearness to a notable killer.

A Moogle joined the party, wiping greasy paws on a flight suit that might have once been green. From his lower position, he nevertheless succeeded in looking me down. Whiskers flaring, he said, sarcastic, 'Kupo 'pon the highest, Balthier, but where did you find her?'

My stomach sank. I turned to the smirking brat, who extended his oil-black hand for me to shake. I folded my arms.

Balthier rolled his eyes and withdrew the offering, flamboyant. 'You know who I am, of course. Apart from glaringly underdressed, you are?'

'Of more use alive than you are. Incapable of polite introduction, are you?'

'Or you'll tell Daddy Margrace on me?' He screwed his face up doubtfully. 'Polite. I imagine this is where I ask if I can take you upstairs and show you my cockpit?'

'Indeed,' I smiled. 'You may. Ask and take.'

He deflated slightly. 'Unfortunately, I'm rather not up to it now, Feathers. It might be something to do with my rough handling by several Rozarrian bruisers earlier this morning. A traumatic experience, it tends to presuppose a man to suspicion.'

'Unfortunately, Balthier, you don't have much of a choice. Balfonheim's under Rozarria's military patronage. You skypirates, including your airship, are under close arrest for smuggling contraband. Or haven't you noticed the guards at the dock?'

The three-part crew of the Maenad peered through the hole in the hull. A bright spark had incited the mob to shred rubbish instead of rotten eggs, and a pungent ticker tape parade rained on the Rozarrian soldiers.

'Is that what they're there for? Imagine that.' Balthier straightened.

'Not our usual admirers,' Fran noted.

'Of course not.' Balthier lifted his chin at me. 'Not after her lot took the lovely presents we brought for Balfonheim.'

Before Nono evicted another cultural exclamation, the paling shrieked, and glazed blindingly white.

Another attack.

Whiplash shocks of air rocked the ships at dock. The paling flared between white and clear—yet the time between strikes remained too far apart to induce failure. Shrapnel flicked through at intervals, a red-hot metal rain, which had the benefit of scattering the crowd back to the shelter of the streets.

Not that Balthier noticed, either the distant attack, the rocking of the Maenad, or the momentary verbal reprieve.

His eyes focused on something distant. Expressionless, his face lost what modicum of appeal it held. As the reprieve from assault extended, Balthier squinted out the hole as shrapnel sizzled into the ocean, puzzling at something.

Balthier rounded on me, eyes alight, his answer obviously found. He looked sufficiently vulpine to have me reach for my dagger's hilt.

Fran shifted her shoulders. No more warning than that, yet I was aware of her eyes on my hand.

'Since you're here, Feathers, you can parrot back this pearler to your master: Rozarria opened fire on a neutral airship, killed my second engineer, boarded without permission and subsequently confiscated goods belonging to a free trader. You have no authority over us. I don't think I want to let you on my airship.'

I bridled. 'A free trader? I'll believe that when I check the receipts for various border taxes you've paid on route.'

Balthier raised enquiring eyebrows at Fran.

Who reproached him, 'In the intensity of the boarding, we seem to have lost our paperwork.'

'Careless of us.'

The paling screeched in active defence. My hands over my ears, I stared at the madman and the Viera, who, but for Fran's twitching left ear, ignored the incoming blast to grin at each other.

Nono glanced out the hole, then up at the skypirates. He threw his arms up in despair, and with one last dire glance in my direction, stalked off into the engine's depths.

'My point,' Balthier said, as soon as the sound permitted, 'our interfering Empire Rozarria goes to great pains to endure by the rules of war. They have to, don't they? Considering how their involvement might be construed by Archadia, if best behaviour wasn't maintained. Your Emperor might be a bit pissed if I take our complaint to a tribunal at the Holy Mount.'

'You can't threaten the Empire with a lawsuit.'

Balthier spread his hands wide. 'What have I got to lose?'

I wanted him to let me do the job Margrace asked of me, simply so I escape Balthier and his overprotective partner. Balthier's reputation for ornery obfuscation for his own amusement had not been exaggerated.

'I've been sent to inspect the ship, nothing more. What harm's it to comply?'

'Compliance,' Balthier said, 'is for days when I feel less of a sack of tripe. After this particular morning, I'm not in the mood for sharing niceties with any Rozarrian. Particularly not one playing fancy dress.'

There came a hellishly familiar roar, the incoming tides of war.

Beyond our limited view, Archadia's current assault on the paling contrived a localized failure by bombardment, enough to let a single Fighter Class through, a Valfarre Fighter Mark I, swift and manoeuvrable. The airship spun into view as it passed the hole in the Maenad's hull, close enough the backdraft pulled at my hair.

Yet the Valfarre arched away from Balfonheim, low, across the sand. Ballistic rounds kicked up sheets of sand and chipped cobbles, Mist back-blasts brightening neat circles of sky, fireballs released.

The Valfarre went for the critical hit: the vulnerable paling generator. If Archadia brought the paling down, their full strike squad could approach, and the battle would be over in moments.

Crewed with Rozarrians, Balfonheim was not so defenceless as it had been. A jury-rigged gun tower spun to target the Valfarre, meeting fire with fire, sprays of bullets, target-disruption spells fouling the Valfarre's fireballs.

In the low wake of the airship, the ocean heaved.

I clung to the Maenad's hull, where the old style of hand-riveting provided many a nub for my fingernails to nick against. The Valfarre must have been downed by an unseen blow, because the Maenad's heaving suddenly redoubled, hull echoing with the slap of waves.

Fran rode the turbulence with ease, in a superbly balanced crouch, while within the engine Nono wrapped himself around a nearby pipe, using his handy wrench for added length where his arms would not span to reach each other. Balthier—

Knees loose, he rode the ruckus with an expression on his face that reminded me of murder. His eyes were black. Had been, I realized, since the moment he saw the Valfarre spin his field of view.

A thick trail of smoke inked the clear blue sky.

The Maenad yet rocked by aftershocks, Balthier flung himself at the opening in the hull.

Fran was quicker. Before he could lunge from deck to dock—and, by appearance, directly into the ocean on the other side—she caught him about the waist, her free hand catching on the header. In the circle of her arm, Balthier held himself rigid.

'Bastards!'

She put her mouth to his hair. 'When we have leisure.'

He panted. 'For what?'

'To rejoice in war? Is that what you want?'

'Cynic,' he said. 'Do you think he had time to scream?'

Balthier's eyes remained black and distant, his expression sheet-pale and twisted, as if transfixed by something that both horrified and enraged him with his powerlessness.

In that moment, I felt a vague kinship with the man.

'Hopefully,' Fran said, warily, 'not.'

As if a switch flicked, colour flooded back into Balthier's expression. He brushed Fran's arm from his waist. She let him. She gave me another unreadable glance, almost angry that I had witnessed their exchange.

Considering the snap of our earlier dialogue, the absence of passion in Balthier's voice chilled me. 'Fran, get Nono out and take her through. Give her the full report, right down to the malfunctioning lever on my chair. Get her off my ship as quickly as possible.'

Balthier took himself off into the dim hold. Fran turned, without checking I followed.

Making clear his displeasure at conducting a tour, Nono recited the airship's inventory of damages with a well-practiced monotony. Familiarise yourself with the airship, Margrace ordered, so I set myself to memorise the tiresome list. At the end of the tortuous tour, Fran decided to interpret 'as quickly as possible' literally, and threw me off the ship.

When I staggered to the quayside, I had lost whatever surge of sympathy I felt for the skypirates.


	3. From a Distance Far

'Petty and arrogant,' I announced, 'imperious, ornery, dubiously motivated and otherwise unstable.'

'Such an explicit rejection of his qualities—'

'I say he says no, and you should consider yourself fortunate he does.'

Over his steam tea, a weak colour suggesting a decided dearth of leaves, Margrace raised one critical eyebrow.

'Ah, well,' I said, stirring against the pain of bruising and sand-rash, both garnered in my fall from the Maenad's cockpit, 'you did ask what I thought.' Gathering my bruised pride, I added, 'The bloody overprotective Viera of his threw me off the ship. From the cockpit, mind. That's a four meter drop.'

Despite the eyebrow, Margrace did not look concerned.

'There's a crowd of witnesses at the docks, if you need confirmation.' I shook shredded rubbish from my hair. Balfonheimers took such delight in another's humiliations.

'Four meters,' Margrace mused. 'Not three and a half? Or five?'

'My lord,' I said, in speaking tones. 'Balthier's not the kind to play along.'

Margrace offered the armchair beside him. 'Your full assessment, then, if you can set aside your prideful fall?'

Disgruntled, I settled in. Despite the humid fug, the tiny room had two benefits, privacy, and the picture window through which we faced the horizon.

'Would an appeal to his ideology meet with success?'

I blinked.

'He is a skypirate,' Margrace said, patient. 'The very idea of Balfonheim, not solely opportunity to profit, has always been the centre of fierce independence. Shall we slant this endeavour as ensuring his future freedoms, and Balfonheim's, through confrontation of the current Archadian difficulty?'

It was hard to answer. To keep myself from laughing, too. Such an idealistic, near artistic view of what Balfonheim represented—if my years away had softened the hardship of my childhood, these two years back had reminded me what the rest of the world was like to forget of the pirate port. Balfonheim was a magnet for mercenaries, black marketers, the underworld's clan hunters, and otherwise political refugees, asylum seekers and criminals running from national persecution. Survival was the first motivation of Balfonheim's masses, only the godtouched among us, malicious or otherwise driven to rise above the rest.

'If you want to appeal to his ideology, look for a more personal approach. A skypirate's loyalty is to himself, his ship, not to Balfonheim's continuance.'

Margrace sipped his tea. 'There must be something here he wants to preserve?'

'Do you know how many races live in Balfonheim? Bangaa don't eat the same as Humes, Moogles won't live apart from each other, Viera don't even think in the same syntax—then there are the Humes. Throw an Archadian up against a Dalmascan, neither of whom can agree to disagree on the relevance, much less the existence, of the righteous divinity as lauded by the Holy Mount— What do you expect to sway the man, a plea for non-existent solidarity?'

'To an extent,' Margrace replied, calm.

'Balfonheim's neutrality is a convenience for the skypirates, a tax-free zone. An evolution of accidental circumstance, not a deliberate national bloody charter.'

'Diverse peoples occupying a defined region,' Margrace mused. 'Evolving a shared cultural ambiance, distinct from any other town or locale. The distinctions born from deep attachments to—or a need to contradict—cultural beliefs and practices. How do you think any nation formed? By circumstance, my little bird. Not by committee.'

I paused, thinking. 'You're talking about offering full independence for Balfonheim. Legalised neutrality.'

'With the political protection the Holy Mount will offer.'

'The Holy Mount's moral righteousness has done Bhujerba little good,' I snapped. 'Nor the midland nations. Archadia abides by their own code of conduct these days.'

'Nevertheless,' Margrace examined his teacup. 'Autonomy is a bargaining chip. Rozarria would be pleased to support Balfonheim's bid to become a city-state.'

Which led me to ponder what possible second, third, fourth layer of purpose Margrace had for the pirate port.

When the blockade descended, I recognised Archadian interest in Balfonheim was no more than guarding an unfortunately positioned back door. The true target was the skycity Bhujerba, Balfonheim's closest neighbour. The skycity controlled the largest known magicite mine in the world. Archadia had been content with Bhujerba's political neutrality, until recently, when Bhujerba closed off the magicite mine and refused to sell its last stockpile to Archadia.

A threatening blockade could cow the skycity Bhujerba into compliance, while avoiding the antagonism of another war. Archadia already battled on another front, and was making further moves towards Nabudis, in Nabradia, the last nation to call on Rozarria's aid.

Bhujerba was an inconvenience, too politically well connected to attack outright.

And of Balfonheim? Sister city to the independent Bhujerban city-state, it was the only port close enough to Bhujerba to offer the skycity's citizens an escape route.

Not to mention Balfonheim's existence within Archadia's borders had always irritated higher Archadian officials. Come an all-out Imperial conflict between Rozarria and Archadia, Balfonheim was in a prime position to threaten Archadian supply lines.

There lay Margrace's interest in ensuring the port was under a stable—and bribable—leadership.

'Ignoring the impossibility of ever getting Balfonheim to unite behind a single figurehead, Balthier's not like to die for an ambiguous future. He already has an Empire, aboard his own ship.'

I suspected Margrace was letting me dig myself a hole.

'His crew? His partnership with Fran holds firm, in all rumour: encourage her to encourage him?'

I was doubtful. 'Pirates throw over all land-based laws. I assume the Viera finds a certain freedom from her race and Eryut's strictures in the sky, considering how devoted she seems to Balthier. Bodyguard-cum-navigator. He hardly seems like to listen to her—'

I stopped, hearing my own words. Devoted felt too tame a description for the fierceness I had witnessed, when Balthier's eyes went berserker-black.

'The third?'

'The Moogle? He was engineer on the Maenad before the airship's current masters liberated her from the last. Engineers who know a dated ship would be rare, the skypirates like as not bribed him to remain.' I hesitated, then offered, 'As a crew, they're not inclined to offer favours, Margrace. They are rather angry about the loss of their Second Engineer.'

'Wherever did they put him?'

'He was shot. When Rozarria took the airship.'

Somewhere amid that hazy torturous briefing on the Maenad's extensive injuries, Fran pushed me into the ship's temporary morgue. Nono rattled off the deceased engineer's bullet wounds, bruises and blood loss with as much dull-voiced scorn as during his description of the chipped paint in the ship's corridors, taken off, so he said, by the slaven-dick sized artillery the Rozarrian boarding party carried instead of normally sized battle guns.

'Did you tell this skypirate and his obscurely motivated crew of the role in mind for them?'

'Certainly not.'

'No?' Long fingers formed a steeple over the tea, in a mudra of infinite patience.

I hardly knew what role Margrace intended, but for what flesh I imagined on his skeletal outline. 'For security's sake, Margrace. As I said, Balthier's not stable; imagine if he sold the story to the Archadians. If I've read his accent correctly—one of his many accents—he's likely ex-Archadian, possibly military, considering how well he flies.'

That revelation did not surprise Margrace. 'If he did sell this story to his ex-compatriots, my little bird, how do you think the Archadians would respond?'

I closed my eyes. 'Laugh themselves sick.'

'You, too, think my master plan absurd.'

'Yes.'

'Yet without a tried and true method, why should not the most unlikely plan succeed?' Margrace's eyes focused out the window. His breath came long and low, timed, I realized, with the distant susurrus of the ocean against the shore. The corners of his lips tightened, resisting a smirk.

'Why ever not,' I muttered.

The mudra of infinite patience relaxed. Margrace sipped his tea again, and this time, made a face. If I remembered correctly, he preferred a darker brew, and sugared thick as syrup. 'Deprived honey, we are yet possessed of sticks. Such as the suggestion to our Archadian skypirate that cooperation will remove suspicion from him, of being an Archadian spy.'

Feeling my bruises, a certain vindictiveness made me grin. Then I remembered the black eyes, and the wildness that promised any threat to Balthier's survival would be met with violence.

'Fran would kill the messenger. Then Balthier would apologise profusely sometime later, from an aerodrome half a world distant.'

The smirk burgeoned then, wide and unrestrained. It exasperated me. The more I tried to dissuade, the more pleased with himself Margrace seemed.

'You believe this sky pirate crew would be able to sufficiently repair their airship ship for flight, without our aid in a circumstance of extreme shortage, and be able to gain enough skystone to effect a secure getaway?'

I paused. 'They would.'

'Then we must move quickly, mustn't we?'

'To detain him? I warn you, the mad bastard cited the law at me—illegal detention in a time of war. If you jail him, and if anything akin to the Holy Mount's neutral court remains after Archadia's done, he'll—'

'You may leave Balthier to me,' Margrace interrupted. 'With no concerns at all to your involvement: you have done well. Your assessment correlates with my own.'

It had always been unlikely that a ship's inspection was the extent of what Margrace wanted of me.

Yet the effective 'good girl' Margrace had just delivered stuck in my throat. Patronising, yes, but his pleasure and his pride brought back too many memories of my time with him. In this bargain I had struck for my life and free retirement, I should have defined a time limit for my renewed obedience to Rozarria.

Aghast, I had visions of myself, grey-haired and bent, while an even more aged Margrace granted me my full absolution.

He spoke again. I recalled my attention.

'To the dockyard, my Lord?'

'Detail the needed repairs,' Margrace continued. 'A team is assigned to your management, along with further instruction specific to the success of this mission.'

I turned to the door, yet dazed.

'Before you go. If the Archadian origin holds true, Balthier should have a family name. You have it, I assume?'

I did, garnered while querying the streets for information on said skypirate's reputation. Balthier walked through the world declaiming himself the leading man in his own exotic tale, discretion no better part of his valour.

'Bunansa. Balthier Mid Bunansa, or Balflear Mied Bunanza. Depends on the dialect.'

Margrace stilled, then grinned, boyish. 'How perfect.'

* * *

The Rozarrian Naval Architect engaged in a loud debate with three Balfonheimer voices of unknown origin.

I discovered this while several streets away from the dockyard's rusty haze. Insult ricocheted through the narrow streets.

Idle observers gathered at the dockyard, interested, arrayed along the fence to watch. A soldier—who, from the ribbon on his pike, should have kept guard at the dockyard's gate—hastened to examine my credentials.

I pointed to the verbal affray. 'What's this?'

'Three draughtsmen,' said the soldier, in explanation. 'One architect.'

The soldier had a kind face, with a sparkle to his eye that did not die on discovering me one of Margrace's vultures. Warmth from a fellow Hume had been scanty these last few days.

I met his gaze with a fire of my own. 'Odds on?'

The solider hemmed and hawed, melodramatic. 'I'd say two-to-one the draughtsmen come out on top. In my humble opinion.'

'The numbers weight things more than that, surely. Three to one?'

'The force of Rozarria behind the one balances things,' the soldier pointed out, laconic. Then he grinned. 'What with the attack this morning, this has been the most interesting week I've had since being stuck here.'

Well I could sympathise with the adrenal ache of a soldier kept too long waiting.

At which it struck me, that for all my irritation towards Margrace, the curdled fear and expectation of my own death, perhaps some of what I felt towards him was gratitude. Once again, he had plucked me from obscurity and set me to purpose.

If only I knew what that purpose was.

With a nod to the soldier, I moved forward to even the odds, force of Rozarria notwithstanding.

One draughtsmen retreated from the affray to sharpen his pencil. He caught my gaze, recognized my authoritative step, and called to the architect and the other two draughtsmen. 'Oi, you lot! The man's bird is here!'

The argument fell silent. The Naval Architect smoothed his ruffled epaulettes and adjusted his high collar, while the draughtsmen busied themselves sweeping sketches beneath the official blueprints. No one seemed glad to see me, as if anticipating my presence would end their disagreement one way or another.

The Naval Architect explained the problem as I approached—

'—by rights, she shouldn't be able to fly even without the added weight of these variations.'

I paused, waiting for the 'so there' that his tone intimated.

'Kupo, yon bloody cubs!' said a grey-furred draughtsman, the sole Moogle, his glower undiminished by his height. 'Can't understand anything built before 680 OV, can you?'

The Naval Architect threw down his ink and crossed his arms. 'I can understand Mist to mass conversions, and that ship hasn't got it right.'

'It's the juice,' said a younger draughtsman to me. 'If you want this to fly with these modifications, you'll have to get the engineers in. Increase the Mist flow and it'll fly, all right.'

'Handle like a Dreadnaught,' muttered the third. 'Won't turn on a gil piece, for certain. It'll be the world's most inefficient ship to fly.'

'As long as it flies, why argue?' Intending to appease, I found myself receiving four angry glares.

'It's a matter of pride,' said the Naval Architect, while three draughstmen nodded in unison. 'Can't let something by without making the most of possible efficiencies.'

A graphite-black paw stabbed at the Maenad's blueprints. 'Do you need all this?'

For the first time, I regarded the evidence of Margrace's unlikely plan, crammed into every viable inch of the Maenad's innards.

I was taken aback.

The Maenad was a mercantile airship. While every airship had some providence towards its own self-defence, the marked differences in a mercantile hull would make this display of weaponry unfeasible.

Forget the weight: what about the recoil?

'Margrace was adamant about this?'

The Moogle draughtsman stared down the smirks of the others. 'Adamant is the word, is it? Adamant. Yes, I suppose you could say he was adamant.'

I cringed, picturing the enthusiastic, affected sweep of Margrace under full sail.

To distract myself from the thought, I dove into the discussion of further practicalities with the dockyard.

When Margrace dismissed me to the dockyard, I assumed the rest of his instructions had reached their destinations, one of which was the joint office of the Balfonheim Liaison and the Rozarrian Chief Supply Clark. Between them, they took charge of Balfonheim's reluctantly pooled resource.

The pair picked their way through the dockyard now. Set expressions suggested they hunted me down, as Margrace's appointed contact, with dire confrontation in mind.

The Balfonheim Liaison I recognised—a tall, fussy retired skypirate, ambitious, who had a finger in many Balfonheim pies through ownership of the port's real estate. At his side, the tidy Chief Supply Clark wore the first complete, immaculate Rozarrian uniform I had seen in days. She eyed me with equal distaste. Rozarria's military did not appreciate Rozarria's agents.

Hands on hips, I glared.

Wariness creased the Chief Supply Clark's brow, but she stronger than anticipated. 'I've received the requisition, little bird, and you can tell your boss it won't be done!'

The High Marshal had appointed the Balfonheim Liaison as a temporary mayor, an action intended to appease the town by ensuring they had a voice in the military councils. Ironic, then, the man said nothing now, though his emphatic nods the wake of the Chief Supply Clark's explosion suggested the ill will between Balfonheim and her unwanted protectors had been put aside, allying against the common enemy.

To my surprise, the Naval Architect came to my defence. 'Margrace was adamant, you know. And you know the Margraces.'

The Chief Supply Clerk snorted. 'But there isn't enough to do it.'

I eased my stance. 'Enough what?'

She met me with clear and unrepentant eyes. 'Enough anything. Fitting out the armory requirements alone will all but strip the town's defenses.'

'If Margrace's plan succeeds—'

'I can damned well guess what our adamant younger Margrace plans. All or nothing for these Margraces, with scarce a thought for their suffering pawns.'

Did I not know that intimately? 'The requisition came in the form of a direct command. Where's your allegiance lie?'

'If this town falls, then I'll be here, love, defending the streets right beside the locals. Where an absence of artillery will be felt. Where will you be, halfway back to Rozarria in Margrace's personal airship?'

'In case you haven't noticed,' I gestured at myself, 'I'm rather local myself.'

We three fell silent, aware of the sudden scrutiny of the Balfonheimers amongst us. The draughtsmen were expressionless.

This was their town, not ours. Despite my association with this place, I could not speak for how they felt. Would they despise the chance that Margrace took with their fates?

'How long?'

The Chief Supply Clerk said, subdued, 'A week, I can have it together.'

The Naval Architect stared at his blueprints. 'Ten days after receipt, we can have this flight-ready. If you give me a speedy engineer.'

'There's more,' I remembered. 'Notable damage to the ship, which, if you pass me the ink, I'll mark down on your plans. Supply'll have to meet requirements for the repairs as well.'

With a pointed look, the elderly draughtsman made me use an overlay of trace and a pencil, displeased with the thought of a rank amateur messing up their best intentions towards granting the Maenad an armoury that would not have been out of place on a Dreadnaught.

If they had known where I had spent my last undercover operation, they might have even trusted me with the ink.

* * *

Following that conclusive discussion, I went to hunt a crew. The density made the streets into corridors between buildings, the horizon obscured.

The Chief Personnel Officer kept his HQ in Threesheets, Balfonheim's second tavern—while the tavern continued its limited operation around him. It would save time when it came to breaking up drunken fights, I supposed, and took myself to the booth with a view the young officer had claimed.

He grinned before I even finished my instructions.

'Volunteers? For one of Margrace's missions? From the army?'

'It's not that unlikely a request. How soon can you meet it?'

He glanced out of the window. 'Just checking,' he explained. 'That the sun still sets west. Are you serious?'

After this morning, all I needed was a sense of humour. A shame I couldn't find one. 'Even Balfonheim's village militia would do. There must be some red-blooded contenders left.'

The thin-faced Personnel Officer scratched under his arm. 'Red-blooded, blue-blooded, green-blooded, furred and scaled contenders. Rebe and Garif and Moogle and bloody Viera, too. But none of them would volunteer to go out,' he nodded at the window, 'in that.'

'It's been a while. Months under siege, now. Some of us or them must be chafing for action.'

'Nothing chafes that much. We know how most of Margrace's schemes resolve themselves—'

Except they didn't know. Margrace's successful plays unfolded in pure silence, the repercussions visible with no knowledge of the levers broken, the cogs ground in the process. Only the failures would ever be so spectacularly known.

'I do know. I've been involved in a few.'

He regarded me with astonishment. 'You don't look like one of his typical little birds. More a hawk, even if you did forget half your feathers.'

'I'm in disguise.'

'It's a good one. Will he be sending you out on this one, too?'

The shock rendered me silent. Until that moment, I had not thought of it.

I had little faith in this mission's outcome. Margrace offered to retire me without prejudice in exchange for my involvement now, but lurking behind that offer had been my betrayal in leaving him, my post and Rozarria. Was this Margrace's way of satisfying his Rozarrian ethic, by sending me out to a sanctioned death on my last duty?

The Chief Personnel Officer took my silence to mean the worst. 'You have my sympathies,' he said, with every sign of sincerity. 'Margrace rides the circumstantial on this one, compromising our odds along the way.'

I shook away the growing sense of foreboding. My knowledge of airships focused on design's cutting edge, my time crewing aboard an airship long in the past. What possible use could I have on board a relic like the Maenad? 'Margrace asked for the numbers, and this set of skills, not for Rozarria's finest men. Send me a crew that meets quantity, and you can send them in at the point of a sword.'

'I'll do what I can.' He cracked his knuckles with habitual machismo. The sympathetic expression remained.

The narrow streets felt colder than I remembered, shadowed. I craved the sun, the broad free sweep of the horizon.

Without clear intention, my steps took me towards the quayside. Distracted, I merged with a crowd—which seemed to be flowing in a particular direction, almost as a mob.

Unlikely that half of Balfonheim had been instantly possessed of my craving for the horizon. I had no doubt to where the inexorable crush intended.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I stood with Balthier and Fran, dagger in my left hand and gun in my right, as we beat our way through a confused mob.

Towards the docks, the crowd whose tide I joined thickened, impassable. Rozarrian soldiers scattered through the Balfonheimers, more than I had seen on the streets in a while. I found a rough wall and a sturdy downpipe, and levered myself upwards to claim a view.

At once, I suspected Margrace. Following through with his promise to handle Balthier himself, Margrace had inexplicably thought it wiser to bring the stubborn pirate pair to him.

In front of the Balfonheim audience, an armed contingent of Rozarrian soldiers had wrestled the pair from their ship. Now they tried to escort the skypirates through the maddening Balfonheim crowd.

Maybe Margrace had lost his touch. Even the lowest infantryman could have told him what would result, sending a display of force against that particular pair.

Nasty to their own, Balfonheimers were dark on outsiders, and already willing to turn against unwanted Imperial guests. Balthier did not help matters, arms folded across his chest, refusing to budge from the dock. At his shoulder, Fran promised lethal force, keeping the ring of soldiers back through force of presence.

As I watched, the soldier confronting Balthier gestured, aggressive. Balthier shook his head, insolent. The skypirate opened his mouth to declaim. I winced in advance.

The words 'seized', 'my cargo' and 'these people's food' drifted across the crowd, in the wake of which, the mutters turned dark.

The crush pressed in.

Eyes narrowed, Balthier nodded and smiled, and repeated, 'That's right, these Imperial bastards took your food!'

From the set of her shoulders, if not the look she exchanged with Balthier, Fran resigned herself to the unavoidable.

The Rozarrian soldiers could detect the mood shift. They responded by shoving against the crowd shoving at them.

Any moment, the thickest one would set his pike or draw his gun.

One of them drew his gun.

Before I could think through the ramifications, I threw myself atop the mass of the crowd, clawing and kneeing at shoulders, heads, crowns. Foolhardy war efforts involving the Maenad could hardly happen without the crew of the Maenad. If the crowd turned and the skypirates died, Margrace would have an easy out from his bargain with me.

I imagined I would get there in time, wave my fresh credentials in the soldiers' faces, reassert their calm, and convince Balthier and Fran to lose the ornery nature and ease their own progression through the crowd.

Instead, a large contingent unhappy Balfonheimers witnessed one of their own launch her wrathful self at the Rozarrian soldiers.

It was all the incitement needed.

The Balfonheimer nearest to the gun-wielding soldier was a scale-skinned Bangaa, hung with bangles and brands noting each battle he'd won. The Bangaa roared his delight, muscled the gun out of the soldier's hands, and took the Rozarrian to the ground.

Panting, with one last kick to the hand holding me, I gained the small circle of clear space next to Balthier and Fran. The soldiers had their attention focused out, their circle barely holding against the shoves. I gained my feet, turned my back to Balthier and shouted past the soldiers—to the Balfonheimers.

'It's not worth it!'

Nameless faces roared slurs against Imperial endeavour, lambasting the sheer nastiness of nicking Balfonheim's fresh food supply from Balfonheim's precious own.

I filled my lungs. 'These two bastard skypirates have been profiteering from you for months! They're not doing anything for you! Are you so desperate to pay a week's wage for a minor luxury? They've been profiteering! Fucking profiteering! From you!'

There came a strange anxious calm, akin to a bomb hanging fire.

On my words, a fair proportion of the crowd decided to ignore the Rozarrians as nothing more than an obstruction between them and the two not-so-hapless skypirates.

I consoled myself with the belief that riot was inevitable.

Balthier patted my heaving shoulder, solicitous. 'Smart. Can see Margrace employs you for more than your brains.'

Fran nudged against my other shoulder and offered me a gun and a blade, drawn from the hip holster and an ankle sheath. Light-fingered, Balthier helped himself to the assault gun hung from the nearest Rozarrian soldier, then delved the pouch on his own hip for ammunition.

'Ready, Fran?'

She coiled, and smiled at him, beatific.

'And you, Feathers?'

'When you are.'

Our resolution came in good time. The protective circle broke.

Fists pummelling like an airship's pistons. Roaring Bangaa curses mangled by the teeth and accent. A harassed Balfonheimer crashing into me, past me, falling. Rozarrian cries, uniforms in various states of bloodied disarray.

Somewhere, someone set something on fire, the air thick, clouded with smoke.

Several things helped us survive. The Balfonheimers were uncertain as to who they should decimate. Balthier and Fran were Balfonheim, from Balthier's lace-heavy white shirt, to Fran's elaborate leathers—yet those who latched on to the cry of profiteering fought to ease personal grievance with the skypirates. More than once, we three staggered into a pocket where we should have gone down, if not for the fact some Balfonheimers defended us while others attacked.

Then the Rozarrians in the crowd decided to get even against the Balfonheimers, after these long, laborious weeks of insults and slurs.

The brawl took on a life of its own.

We won free of the mob, pushing into the less populated streets past the quayside. Here, with space to move, Balfonheimers warred against Balfonheimers, seeking to even old scores while the Rozarrians were too occupied to keep order. The real fight happened here.

For the first time, I witnessed the appalling display of cockery and arrogance of Balthier and Fran in full fight. Feint and foul, they fought dirty—but they left more unconscious in their wake than the dead. Despite their dubious motivations, it was comforting to know them without malice.

Gasping and sweating, the three of us won our way free, at last ducking into an alleyway to avoid a cohort pelting down the street. Cornered there, we discovered we had been followed—by the same roaring Bangaa who precipitated the brawl.

He had friends, strange as it seemed: four other Bangaa.

Balthier screwed up his face. 'Gods, not him.'

Fran nudged her knee against Balthier's. 'You must owe him money.'

'Of course I do,' Balthier said, indignant. 'If I ever gave everyone what I owed them, we wouldn't be nearly as rich as we are.'

When I had been a child in Balfonheim, skypirates had been borderline heroic figures, even within Balfonheim's uncertain moral definition. There was even a saying: when skypirates began to count their booty, they had become mere skyborne thieves.

I took the opportunity to remind Balthier of exactly that.

He looked scornful. 'Successful skypiracy is nothing more than a series of favourable business transactions. Deep breath now!'

Balthier obeyed his own advice before lobbing a sealed vial at the mouth of the alleyway. Foul-smelling smoke boiled out, almost solid, tangling about the wretched Bangaa cohort.

I bent double, retching and gasping. Unlike Fran, I had yet to resign myself to Balthier's expectation that everyone listened to him, in no position to protest as he smashed the glass out of a narrow window with the butt of his purloined gun. He and Fran hauled me through a stranger's empty house. Eyes watering, I caught brief glimpses of a threadbare lifestyle, thin rugs and one lonely chair, before we gained the second storey. I manoeuvred myself through the second window, and leaped with them, first to the neighbour's lower eaves, then onwards, to a second rooftop.

After which, we stopped for the air the alleyway had not provided. Balthier ripped off his smoke-stained sleeve to mop a cut curving along Fran's brow.

Her expression stayed placid, porcelain, whatever the pain of the touch. Childishly intent, the tip of Balthier's tongue caught between his teeth.

'Field stitch?' Balthier offered.

Fran touched the thin wound where it rose into her hairline, then shook her head, ginger. She flicked a finger in my direction. 'Her Lord Margrace will provide better conditions for it.'

'So now you're coming along quietly? Why even bother resisting—'

They grinned at each other. 'I hardly think quietly,' Balthier said, reproachful. 'It does an Imperial son good to know not everyone leaps to obey.'

A significant part of me yet longed to brawl, caught in the riot. 'Oh, you think I enjoy leaping to obey? He's my lord and master, he pulled me off the streets and trained me—he owns my life.'

'And what a reason to risk one's own life.'

'While profit is a good reason, pirate?'

'The only reason, Feathers.'

'One might consider,' Fran added, 'the many varied definitions of profit.'

The ease with which the pair fought free, escaped the ground level mob and gained the rooftops spoke of too many quick getaways. Even the way they balanced on pitched shingle bore the ease of practice.

'We should hasten.' Fran looked down, into the nearest alleyway, her ears at attention. 'It will not take them long to work a way to follow.'

'Margrace is in the manse, I presume?'

Balthier waved one braceletted wrist towards Balfonheim's sole dockside mansion. Built decades ago by a skypirate who touted himself as the pirates' future king, the wishful thinker lasted fifteen days in power, though the manse lived on in legend. Anyone who tried to inhabit the place seemed bound for certain death and failure.

'Not likely. He's in with the rest of the operations crew, opposite the Whitecap.'

'Deference in the face of local traditions, I take it?' Balthier offered me the pad of sleeve with which he had tended Fran's wound. With an almost proprietary pride, he said, 'You've bloodsplatter on your cheeks, Feathers. You're a deadly little thing to wield in a war, aren't you?'

Only after he and his partner had moved ahead did I dab at the gore, discreetly.


	4. Smelling Ever So Slightly of Roses

In the corridor outside of Margrace's closet, the Balfonheim Liaison and a Rozarrian Third Officer waited.

Assuming a mirrored position against the opposite wall, Balthier settled himself, Fran a moment later. If I had ever had doubts of Balthier's military origin, they were disposed of then: he draped in obvious patronage to the gods of queues that formed outside the studies of commanding officers.

Even Fran eyed him askance, amused.

The Balfonheim Liaison thought along somewhat of the same lines. 'Making yourself comfortable?' Despite the blunt stare taking in Balthier and Fran, he directed his scorn at me. 'Don't be. Himself wants you lot to go right on in.'

'Keeping you waiting, while us priority cases get ushered through?' Balthier straightened with slow grace, and could not have been more irritating if he tried.

The Liaison sneered, eyes dark. 'There's six good townsfolk in with the medics now, courtesy of you lot. Fractured skulls, severe injuries, and here you are, sauntering about as though you had nothing to do with it.'

'Only six?'

'How many bad ones, if but six good?'

Speaking atop each other, the skypirates swapped a smirk. Balthier cracked his knuckles.

'Not mentioning minor fractures and broken bones,' added the Third Officer. 'The full tally's not in yet, but it's been a right riot, all thanks to you.'

'Most welcome,' Balthier murmured, smug.

The murderous mood radiating from the Balfonheim Liaison thickened.

The Third Officer apportioned his regard between the Liaison, the skypirates, and myself. He leaned forward and said, as though a co-conspirator, 'Though we did get one mad Bangaa bugger good—Ba'gamnan. At last. Has been a bit of a militant force for a while, a real stirrer. Nothing like a riot for an excuse to sweep the streets.'

'I hope Margrace hangs the lot of you,' the Balfonheim Liaison snapped.

With a sympathetic smile at my fellow Third Officer, I opened the door to Margrace's office and ushered in Balthier and Fran.

I hoped this would mark the last time I'd have to see them.

* * *

'You encountered some trouble.'

This deduction made after a prolonged silence, during which Margrace absorbed the state of our impromptu trio.

Balthier was filthy, Fran was bloody, and I suspected the back of my quilted overshirt trailed rags from where a claw had opened the stitching.

'Not at all,' I said, brisk. 'The dockyard, supplies and personnel confirmed they're capable of meeting the required deadline.'

Balthier looked at me. Fran actually laughed.

'I referenced the riot,' Margrace said, a heartbeat behind. 'Reports corroborate your involvement as the instigating factor—'

'I never—'

'Yet an agent of mine unwary enough to instigate a riot might be so blind as to miss its happening.'

'I did not—'

My indignation amused Balthier. He stepped forward and bowed, flamboyant. 'T'was but a local dance. A Balfonheim tradition, certainly not a riot. Though I understand how an outsider might make the assumption.'

The implicit reprimand jarred me. First aghast, defensive, and rapidly angry, I was not willing to let anyone fight my battles. Particularly not someone wearing Balthier's smirk.

'I am to bear the responsibility of this as well, Margrace? Am I? Then you should release me from our bonds whatever the consequence, for I never suggested myself capable of preventing a riot. This has been spoiling for explosion since your lot arrived.'

I dusted my shirt and coat, from which a cloud of riot-dust issued, flaking and bloody. Lips narrowed, I waited for the follow-through.

Yet Margrace nodded, satisfied. He resumed his observation of the skypirates.

Balthier crossed his arms, Fran with her hands on her hips. She stood a good few steps behind the other, their heads inclined in opposing directions. The pose set Balthier as the obvious focus, with his affectation, drawing the eye. I imagined them in a tavern, or another skypirate's den: Balthier would do the talking, holding attention, while Fran assessed others, herself ignored as anything but the muscle. Such was the drama of the pose, I half-expected lancing sunlight to fall from the upper recesses of a vaulted ceiling, framing them in light. As this was a converted storage closet, the best they got was a curve of Margrace's lips.

Balthier lifted his chin. 'So you're in charge?'

'Certainly not,' Margrace said. 'I am but a humble emissary of the Rozarrian Empire, sent to do my utmost to end our war.'

'Your war,' Balthier muttered. 'There's an admiral around here I can talk to, then. A Marshal?'

'The High Marshal El-Ahala heads the Rozarrian land-based installation,' Fran said, quietly. 'If I recall correctly, a spry lad, with a preference for heavy armour and bullish weaponry.'

Balthier never took his eyes from Margrace. 'Fran knows her men by their weapons. Or her weapons by her men, eh?'

I swallowed my surprise. The High Marshal, a spry lad? How long ago had Fran known him, or of him?

'Your lady's information is correct,' Margrace said, politic.

'Fran's her own lady,' Balthier interrupted. 'She is my navigator, though.'

'Of course. You will not be speaking with the Marshal.'

'Well, Margrace, I want recompense for the damages to my ship. I'm sure your little bird has already twittered into your ear—'

'She is her own little bird,' Margrace corrected mildly, 'not mine. We are temporarily in occupation of the same raft, shall we say?'

'You can say whatever you like. In preservation of my own rather battered raft, I'd rather we settle this without the Holy Mount, or a court of law. Shall I present a fee, or would you prefer to garner your own quotes?'

Margrace frowned. 'Personal damages during wartime are hardly a matter for compensation—'

'Your war,' Balthier stressed, 'not mine. I'm a free trader, a neutral trader. Rest assured, if the Archadians had brought down my ship, I'd be up before the next nearest Judge Magister to press a similar suit.'

'What suit?'

'Your warning shot, Margrace, went right through my engine room—and my Second Engineer. That's a hostile action on a declared neutral.'

'There was sufficient doubt as to your neutrality to justify such an attack.'

'Shall we let the Holy Mount decide?'

Margrace pushed his glasses to his crown. 'It would be a performance to remember, witnessing a man with your history attempting to present himself as uninvolved in this particular war. You, and by proximity, your lovely navigator, are rather incontrovertibly committed.'

Balthier stilled, then twitched his lips, a stiff parody of a smile.

Balthier's confidence did not falter, not yet—but his slit-eyed curiosity overwhelmed it. 'How do you figure our involvement, then? The Maenad doesn't even bear artillery, only our personal weaponry, in itself scaled for hunts, not wars. Even when boarded, we didn't fire a single shot in our own defense.'

'You have more in common with the Archadians out there than your blood.'

Balthier's expression went blank.

'Should I say Ffamran?' Margrace asked, polite.

Fran's lips moved in the shape of the name.

'Sorry,' Balthier said, a second too late. 'What?'

'A privilege to be surrounded by a plague of runaways.' Margrace inclined his head, as though Balthier's response had been a gracious introduction. 'The most notorious being our Ffamran Mid Bunansa, who served as Midshipman and solo Fighter Pilot within the Archadian 12th Fleet, who was in process of elevation to the elite ranks of the Imperial Judges.'

I blinked back my shock. The Judges were the elite of the Archadian army, raised from rank and file to serve the Imperial family. In foreign territories, the Judges commanded, acting as guardians of both law and order. So the saying went: judge, jury and executioner.

'I was never a Judge, Margrace, nor am I a soldier. I left the Magistracy behind.'

'You were conscripted four years ago on a standard eight year tour, yet there stands no formal demobilisation script against young Ffamran's name,' Margrace said. 'Your allegiance lies with Archadia.'

'Conscription means little enough,' Balthier said. 'You cite right-to-kill under claims I flew an Archadian flag—the monks take one look at the Maenad and the Holy Mount throws out the argument.'

Margrace spread his hands, conciliatory. 'Yet what would they do when I present evidence the son of Doctor Cidolphus Demen Bunansa, father of the modern airship, of Archadia's Draklor Laboratories, has worn a longstanding pose as a skypirate?'

'Pose—'

'Which enabled him to complete acts of espionage during a time of war, against both Balfonheim and Bhujerba?'

Balthier sucked in his breath. Fran turned to him, just her head, eerie in her otherwise stillness.

'Incidentally,' Margrace added, 'what would Balfonheim do to such a spy, if I let word leak?'

Fortunately, Margrace made no play at false sympathy, no tone to his voice but monotonous efficiency. Balthier's eyes went black with anger.

I did not have to imagine the sensation of one's past closing in. The eradication of viable escape. The inability to even acknowledge there was any escape, blinded by the belief we deserved to be crushed for what we had been.

'Balthier?' Fran said, quiet. 'Is this true?'

Without obvious motion, the space between them disappeared, his shoulder against hers. For solidarity, perhaps, but I remained aware of how ready they were, always, for fight or flight.

'The leading man strikes many a pose,' Fran muttered.

'I'm not,' Balthier said, spiteful, 'a bloody spy.'

'Of course,' Margrace said, 'even sons of Cidolphus can run away. The Rozarrian Empire would be pleased to bury your past in exchange for services attending our mutual cause.'

The anger turned to an angrier realisation. 'You can go walk off a long pier if you think you can entrap me. A mutual cause! I've no mutual cause with Rozarria. You want exactly what they,' a finger stabbed at Margrace's picture window, to the sky where Archadia waited, 'want, Bhujerba's nethicite. If I could, I'd dump the bloody lot of it into the sea and damned be to both Empires.'

Balthier slammed open the door and sought liberty, except Margrace anticipated even this reaction. Gathered soldiers bared their blades, barring the exit.

Balthier glared at Margrace, more daggers there than the corridor currently contained.

'Certainly Rozarria would be pleased to hear the fee for your services, and for the charter of your airship,' Margrace said, soothing. 'An independent skypirate could hardly be expected to perform without a contract for services rendered.'

Balthier threw himself into the net of blades, batting them down without concern for his forearms. The soldiers must have been instructed not to harm the skypirates: blades lowering, impotent, as Balthier shoved past. Before Balthier's insults could drive the soldiers past their reserve, Fran pressed her palm against the small of Balthier's back and said one word.

'Tomorrow.'

With one last lethal stare, Balthier let his partner guide him away. Fran frowned down at him as they went, contemplative.

Margrace closed the door. We were alone, in that narrow, unbearably stuffy room.

'You see, my little bird, a contradictory being this skypirate. Unpredictable.'

'I don't know, Margrace. That performance went as I would have predicted.'

'Then your predictions scarce touch on the surface of his motivation. Contrary to appearances, it seems our runaway does indeed fight for a moral reason. Profit is secondary.'

I paused. 'A temporary aberration on his part.'

'It seems to be a moral that his navigator likewise supports.'

'She was rather quiet, sir.'

'Then you did not see her eyes when Balthier mentioned the nethicite. Profit would have been a lever. A powerful lever, with their own survival as the fulcrum. But small need for sticks when Balthier has given us the carrot with which to lead him.'

'You think so?'

'What do you think?'

'Sticks and carrots aside, you'll have a hard time convincing Balthier to commit open suicide. Even if it is for some common cause.'

'Suicide, that one?' Margrace shook his head. 'He is too well accustomed to surviving to break the habit now.'

* * *

Be it the impromptu blackmail, or the sweetener of the formal charter, the Maenad would make at least one flight under Margrace's command. I predicted that readily enough.

Yet, once beyond Balfonheim's paling, Balthier and Fran could run. If they did, Margrace would shatter any hope they had of returning to Balfonheim, but what did reputation matter to the free?

Delivering my report on the dockyard's progress, I bore tea and dry biscuit to Margrace's office. The report came out of necessity, the tea and biscuit begrudged, as Margrace had done little enough to suppress the rumour of my involvement in the riot.

Sullen, I put the question of the Maenad's possible truancy to Margrace.

'You should stop them, of course,' Margrace answered.

I nearly choked on my biscuit. 'Me?

'How could I let the ship fly without a Rozarrian aboard?' He looked at me, his amazement feigned amazement. 'Did I not make it clear the Maenad was your personal mission?'

There would be no grey-haired release of my service to Rozarria. Margrace sent me to my death.

'To bring that pair to salvation?' I asked, snide. 'As unlikely as stop a town-wide riot.'

'The skypirates are well equipped to engender their own salvation. You are insurance.'

Shortly after Margrace's cruel revelation, Balthier and Fran arrived, much repaired from the last time I'd seen them. I poured weak tea and passed around biscuits. Seated, they assumed a casual studied pose that made my instincts itch, as it suggested that Balthier would prefer to riffle through Margrace's desk while Fran diligently stripped paintings from frames and rolled up the canvases.

'Isn't this lovely?' Balthier said, smiling. 'Tea and biscuits, and here I was, thinking we were here for a briefing.'

So Balthier had found a reason to resign himself to his role. He hid his distaste for it by taking a large mouthful of tea. For some reason, he came up from the cup with a wide grin. 'Fran! Did you taste it?'

'I did,' said she. 'Talbot's Fourteenth Best Brew.'

'One of our crates,' Balthier explained, with satisfaction. 'I do hope you got an exorbitant price for it, Margrace. Seeing as we might be charging interest.'

I glared at my own cup. I was supposed to die proud serving aboard this man's airship?

Margrace set his cup down. 'The tea is being distributed through the Supply Office with complete impartiality to the townsfolk.'

Balthier and Fran, almost in unison, flinched. 'Free!'

In the interval since I had last seen them, Balthier had firmly secured his mask. The anger, the startling attack on nethicite seemed set behind him. While Dr. Cidolphus Bunansa's son might know the word, and bear the substance itself a grudge, I could not imagine why.

This Balthier was a profiteer, a skypirate. He had no ulterior motives. This Balthier would like as not prefer to confiscate Bhujerba's nethicite for himself, sit on a cache, a dragon gloating 'pon its gems, and drive up the market price before selling.

'To business, then?' Margrace asked.

'If you don't take the bloody fun out of it.' Balthier scowled at his tea. 'Salaries, first.'

Margrace eased back in his chair.

'Salaries, Margrace. If we're under indefinite contract to the Rozarrian military, I'd expect a salary for myself and my crew. Alternately, a lump sum payment can be negotiated if you define a time limit.'

'A lump sum might be preferable.'

'I assume exclusive use of the Maenad is essential?'

Margrace nodded gravely.

'Then there's also the charter fee atop the lump sum.'

'A reasonable rate?' Margrace asked.

'Daily,' Fran said, deft, and reduced even Margrace to an almost splutter.

'Surely—'

'The Maenad,' Fran inserted, 'is a sturdy and powerful ship, crewed by experienced blockade runners. And is, alas, an expensive ship. Skystone has become scarce within the blockade, and the Maenad's maintenance—'

'Maintenance,' I exclaimed, 'on a bloody antique—'

'A classic,' Balthier corrected, grinning at his tea. '684 OV. A rather good year, in my humble opinion.'

'Some background to the venture,' Margrace interrupted, 'before we commence full negotiations?'

'Please.'

I folded my arms and stared at the cornice, where a spiderweb hung empty.

'The situation in Balfonheim concerns us. Our state of entrapment requires a certain level of commitment on Archadia's part. Archadia does seem content, after our unwarranted earlier engagement, to wait for starvation to bring Balfonheim to fold.'

'You want us to run supplies? We would without your coercion.'

Margrace winced at coercion. 'Rozarria would rather ensure Archadia keeps the blockade manned, for as long as possible. Are you aware that Archadia has moved in force against Nabudis?'

Balthier gave a low whistle. 'Blockading half the skies and warring against the other. The Emperor's spreading his fleet rather thin.'

'Rozarria cannot, as you know, move against Archadia in corresponding force.'

'Scared of being crushed?'

'It is not expedient for Rozarria to antagonise Archadia. Though it is not a matter,' Margrace added sharply, 'of measuring numbers against numbers.'

Fran flicked an ear, a slight tilt of her chin, but it was enough to draw Balthier's eye.

'Draklor,' Fran said, as if to Balthier alone. 'The Laboratory promises uncertain mortality to the contenders, and an afterlife to match the present horrors.'

'Oh yes,' Balthier made an expression of distaste. 'Weapons research, bah. Draklor's endless bag of tricks. Small wonder Rozarria's men would rather settle for a common soldier's fate. I would.'

'And did,' Fran murmured.

Magrace continued. 'Draklor's attentions had always been divided between airship design, sundry weapons and magickal endeavours. Since Cidolphus's appointment as head researcher, particular attention has been paid to magicite research, with great strides made in manufacting magicite, and improved methods of drawing energy from the stones.'

Balthier gave not a flicker of emotion. I wondered if he had been aware of his father's elevation to the role.

'You are aware of the variety of magicite termed nethicite.'

'Intimately,' Balthier said, without inflexion. 'Unlike the other magicites, it absorbs Mist. Generating massive amounts of energy for use in Archadia's weaponry. I doubt Archadia would waste what small quantity of nethicite they possess on Balfonheim.'

Margrace shook his head. 'Two years ago, Draklor commenced a program of manufacting nethicite. There have always been limits on naturally mined nethicite's destructive capacity, imposed by its rarity, and native limitations.'

Balthier arched an eyebrow. 'So if Draklor is manufacting its own nethicite—'

'Then there are no limits to its destructive capacity,' I said, stiffly.

'But there are,' Fran said. 'The limits of Hume inventiveness.'

A small silence extended.

'We lost our contact in Draklor two years ago,' Margrace said. 'A strict security system had been put in place to ensure Draklor's knowledge did not leave its doors. What limits of Hume inventiveness have been imposed on manufacted nethicite, we do not know. Manufacted skystone itself bears a great, unstable explosive power already - if nethicite, a related cousin in process and in origin, bears a similar unstable power, imagine the destruction Archadia could wreak.'

'You want us to break into Draklor and steal the Empire's secrets?'

I startled. Was I the only one hearing Balthier's eagerness?

'I would not entrust such an action to skypirates,' Margrace said, calmly enough. 'I would rather the Maenad play a diversionary role. It is in our interests to ensure Archadia's fleet is divided, full force away from the kingdom of Nabudis. The Maenad will have an essential role—'

Fran leaned forward, with an intensity that demanded our attention. 'You wish to force Archadia to demonstrate their manufacted nethicite. Before the stone's brought to bear against Rozarria.'

Her conclusion surprised me. Margrace outlined his plan to me prior to this briefing, but couched in terms of offsetting Archadia's greater numbers with numerous battlefields to maintain.

But of course, the end result would draw Archadia into using its most potent artillery, to end the battle sooner.

Fran was so focused on Margrace, she did not notice Balthier's abortive hand out, as though he would touch her to calm.

'That will not necessarily be the end result.' Margrace adjusted his glasses. Despite the smile, he looked disturbed.

'Relying a bit much on Archadian moral restraint, aren't we?' Balthier waved a dismissive hand. 'In any case, the affair strikes me as rather unfeasible. The Maenad is a cargo ship. What can we do against the Archadians?'

'Bluff. Is that so far from your usual scope?'

'Bluff—as what, an Archadian supply ship? That's begging to be boarded. The first Archadian crew that caught us would seize the ship or shoot us out of the sky.'

'But you would not be a supply ship,' Margrace said. 'You would be a battleship.'

Balthier and Fran exchanged a glance. 'Too slow,' Fran said, eventually. 'The Maenad, as the colloquial would say, cannot curve on the far edge of a coin.'

'Concealed guns,' Balthier murmured. 'To a Cruiser Class standard, I assume? But without the armour. Pretend to be a treasure chest, turn out to be a trap. The ultimate bluff.'

'So you consider there is a chance?' Margrace pressed.

'A chance?' Balthier scoffed. 'And they say I've delusions of grandeur.'

'Every chance is a worthy one.'

'The Archadian ships will have guns too. Bigger and better.'

'If you bluff as well as you claimed, then they will have no reason to use them until too late.'

'You'll not be against the main flotilla,' I said, quietly. 'You'll be on the outskirts of the blockade, targeting likeminded cargo ships and isolated patrols. You'll seem but another potential supply ship, even as typecast as the Maenad is—Archadia has pulled in its allies' airships to meet the supply need, and the Maenad's make and model is yet in use in Archadia's northern regions. And every now and then, a Carrier will draw in close with preparation to board, in anticipation of your supplies—'

Balthier furrowed his brow, quizzical. 'What's to stop the rest of them coming in after us after our first success?'

'Maintain your cover,' Margrace said. 'Strike before you're reported. The destroyed ships will of course show traces of the weaponry associated with a Cruiser—a Rozarrian Carrier. Archadia will be looking for that, not—'

'A clapped-out, ancient cargo ship.' Balthier shook his head, then laughed. The sound was unexpected. For all the mobility of his smiles and features, he did not often laugh. 'What's more likely, Margrace, that the Empire might suspect a clapped out trader of destroying their airships, or that there's some Rozarrian airship out there with the mystical ability to turn itself invisible?'

I moved forward on my chair. 'You might be surprised. Draklor's airship department worked on pioneering sight as well as screen invisibility. Your role might begat the rumour that Rozarria has achieved what Archades' pre-eminent research facility has not.'

Balthier turned to me. 'What's your involvement in this gimmick, Feathers?'

I was loathe to share with him, the recent past yet a raw wound, bleeding pride. Yet a small part considered Balthier's own unwilling exposure, and I felt again that surge of uncanny kinship. I hesitated.

My salvation came from an unlikely source.

'She will be with us,' Fran said. 'Imperial Rozarria's anchoring presence.'

Margrace nodded, once and solemn.

'We will need to hire a gunnery crew,' Fran said. 'We are not trained for artillery.'

How quickly her intent unease from earlier had subordinated to Balthier's growing interest. Perhaps he, too, felt that odd gratitude to those who could give us purpose.

Margrace gestured in my direction. 'Your newest crewmate has sufficient training, she will be in direct charge of the rest of the hired crew.'

'Hence the damages inspection, no doubt. Familiarising yourself with the limitations of your new nest, Feathers?' Balthier eyed me askance, then whipped back to Margrace. 'Repairs for said damages—and any further damages received on course —will be in addition to the daily rate and the salary.'

'What makes you think Rozarria's military has the money to feather your nest?'

'Hardly the military,' Balthier drawled. 'On account of our special services to the Rozarrian Empire's youngest son,' a discreet nod in Margrace's direction, 'I expect our recompense will rise from the Margraces' personal coffers.'

'Especially,' Fran murmured, 'as our permanent silence for a military action unsanctioned by the Rozarrian Empire will have to be bought in addition to our bodies.'

'Funds,' Margrace said, 'might be available for such a thing.' A pause, and then Margrace tipped his glasses at Fran. This time his smile came free. 'Had we met in different circumstances, I would have been pleased to extend an offer of further employment. I would offer regardless—'

Unsubtle, Balthier went rigid as a sword.

'The skies you offer your birds, your Highness,' Fran said, 'are not so free as those I fly.'

Balthier snapped his jaw shut on his offensive volley. He began again, crisp. 'In addition. I anticipate quite a loss on our usual run. We'll need to be recouping those. Capital depreciation, wear and tear, will also be a cost for your consideration.'

'Especially when an Archadian Atomos guts the rings off your enterprise and sends you to the ocean floor?'

Balthier gave me a wry glance. 'The exact figure can be negotiated later—'

'The exact daily figure,' Fran reminded us.

Her familiar intercession eased Balthier into his usual slouch. 'With a six month guarantee of funds, methinks. Regardless of whether or not those six months are played out in the air.'

'Two months,' Margrace said, at last terse in the face of such avarice.

Two months of deceptive action was six weeks in excess of my estimate of the Maenad's survival.

Fran sighed, and Balthier agreed with her. 'That point, I assume, is non-negotiable? Have a heart, man—we're barely going to break even.'

'Which might be alleviated,' Fran said, 'if the Maenad continued her usual preservative actions on those Archadian airships otherwise destined for the ocean floor.'

Margrace turned from one to the other, quizzical.

I felt the need to translate. 'They want you to sanction piracy. Looting.'

'All those plump Archadian ships,' Balthier said, mournful.

'The goods, otherwise useful, lost, drowned,' Fran said.

'Why would my word be necessary to assure you your profits?'

'We are operational only under your auspices, Margrace,' and Balthier bowed, grandiose, in my direction. 'Wouldn't want your little woodpecker over there taking our eyes out every time we did as our nature demanded and rescued Archadian providence from a fateful demise. Now would we?'

I bared my teeth at the shameless bastard.

'As long as our contract is upheld,' Margrace said, 'the Maenad's actions will not be my concern.'

'Margrace,' I acknowledged, severe.

Balthier grinned, and offered me the last biscuit with a flourish.


	5. An Unconscionable Appointment

Most of the Maenad's alterations were behind me; my days resumed a usual monotony. Seething against the constraint, I arrived at my place of boarding one fine afternoon to find myself without a room.

Balfonheimers now saw me in Rozarrian company, reinforcing their traditional distrust—even more so, for I had been one of them for a time, and now, I acted in closer consult with the Rozarrian intruders than the dubiously elected Balfonheim Liaison. My landlord thwarted potential complaint by depositing my belongings in the lobby for me, with a hands-on-hips statement that due to the increasing numbers of war refugees and decreasing amounts of food, the boardinghouse could no longer provide me with a bed.

'What refugees?' I challenged, though I collected my bundled belongings. 'We're under a blockade.'

Carrybag tied to one suitcase, toting the other and a bulging holdall slung across my middle, I cast aside my neutrality with curses. I stalked towards Threesheets, where the sympathetic Personnel Officer would find a bed for one of Margrace's unwillingly martyred agents. Yet along the way, I passed a house-turned-barracks, where a knowing snigger from a soldier reminded me I would not find the refuge I needed.

My Balfonheim neutrality discarded, Rozarria's no more attractive, I was left no alliance but Balthier's own.

Nono saw me first, working as he was on a mechanism near the head of the gangway. Greasy paws left matted prints through his fur. 'You're early, kupo, we're not ready to leave yet.'

'I'm coming aboard now,' I said, lofty. 'Time to settle in and familiarise myself with the layout of the ship.'

He gave me an indignant look and positioned himself to obstruct my entry.

I clenched my teeth, but even a small ship's insolence was more welcome than a barracks hazing. 'Get out of my way, greasehead.'

'Does Balthier know you're coming aboard?'

'Yes.'

'Now, kupo?'

'Why don't you go and tell him?' When Nono showed no sign of moving, I shoved a case at him. 'While you're on the way, you can show me where the Second Officer's cabin is.'

Nono's protest began with a statement of how insolent, temporarily appointed gunnery officers did not deserve such a well-situated cabin, to which I responded that Imperial agents most certainly did—far more than Moogles deserved a position as chief engineer when they barely stood waist high to the smallest piston.

It escalated from there.

Our fight spoiled when Fran emerged from the ship's fluorescent silences, shining leather and poised heels. Nono lapsed into a smug little silence, arms crossed.

'She wants Sairo's cabin! Balthier'll flip, kupo!'

A glance passed between the two before Nono nodded, scowled at me, and returned to his repair of the damaged door seal.

I heaved my shoulders. Did everyone on the ship speak through glances and telepathy?

'Follow along. I'll show you to your berth.' Fran smiled over her shoulder at me, slight and knowing. No doubt she remembered her escort duties on my first painful tour of the Maenad.

'Again.' Briefly, I thought of telling her—asking her to help with my bags, but her wry smile convinced me to withhold.

'Sairo was your other engineer?' I ducked under a low-hanging pipe, which swung from a single screwed thread.

'Yes.'

'Strange that a second engineer would have a cabin, instead of the commons.'

'He and Balthier were—comfortable together, close.'

I swallowed that pause whole. The cabin I had so blithely demanded adjoined the captain's, which no doubt Balthier had claimed. Sairo and Balthier had been the only two Humes aboard the Maenad.

'A slight to your long service, being deprived of the second-best cabin simply for Balthier's—convenience?'

Fran gave me a speaking look. 'I claim the commons, as the Maenad keeps no excess crew. The size suits my preference for quiet mornings and shadowed space, while the closeness did suit Balthier and Sairo well.'

I reconsidered the ship's schematic, puzzling at the hierarchy this represented. The Maenad should have been crewed by seven, at a minimum, including an ordinary crew of four bunked down in the commons sleeping room. If Fran held that space alone, that would make it the largest private cabin on the airship—but would also require our incoming gun crew to make do with blankets in the hold.

'I assume Nono's sleeping arrangements are more conventional. Or has he converted the hold into a Moogle-sized den?'

Fran stopped, abrupt. I did not expect her sympathy when she turned.

'You must understand, if you would find some comfort in your assignment. Balfonheim clothes you, but the core of you beats to a Rozarrian pulse. From the cheapest peasant to the richest Imperial son, Rozarrians live according to a hierarchy invoked on them at birth.' A tight smile, as Fran touched long-nailed fingers to her d�colletage. 'A reason why the Viera of Eryut Village are able to converse with Rozarrians, and not with Archadia. But this is the Maenad, and we do not abide by rank and file here. Where we sleep, and with whom, has never been signatory of our position, nor of the value of our voice in where or how this ship flies.'

I thought, again, of what motley gun crew would be shuttled to this ship at swordpoint, the necessity of powerful hierarchy to command obedience, to weld a disparate crew into a single war-machine. I winced. Balthier hadn't the presence for command, no matter his air of dangerous irrationality. He wore the languid stance of a moody, temperamental, if entertainingly competent loner.

Forget Archadia: Balthier would scarce be able to survive his own crew. Mutiny seemed likely.

'So the Maenad flies by consensus rule, for the mutually weak?'

Fran resumed the lead. Her voice echoed down from the ladder's shaft as I stared up at her swaying tail.

'The word is partnership. We fly with quantifiable shares. In times of attack, Balthier holds captaincy. At other times, he is simply the greater shareholder.'

Corporate pirates, if not corporate piracy. 'How so Archadian of our runaway.'

Fran made a disapproving sound, holding out a hand to help me from the ladder to the second deck. 'We have our jobs assigned, aboard, our tasks. Roles are assumed and discarded with the ease of a player on a stage. No need for ought but our competence to define us.'

'Does it?'

'We are good at what we do.' Fran's grip turned to a handclasp, a shout of affection for a race that touched rarely. 'Ration your pleasures while aboard. We will be sailing through a long sky.'

Her unlikely confidence almost convinced me.

Fran ushered me into what had once been Sairo's cabin. I discovered everything about it in a moment, as cramped and nasty as any officer's cabin. The mattress looked frighteningly used.

Fran met my dismay with a flashed grin, revealing two aligned dimples.

'I think I need a drink,' I announced. 'Would you like one, too?'

'One or two,' Fran said, with grave humour.

'If we can find a place serving. The shortages pinch, these days.'

A hesitation, and then she nodded. 'I know a likely place.'

A brief, businesslike handclasp, and Fran left me to unpack with the adjunct that we would meet at the far end of the quay.

* * *

Fran led us to the Moogle district, optimistically named for three back-lane crossovers with low doors. Fran breathed deeply, as if hunting a scent, and took me to a nondescript door flanked by two bottle-thick glass windows, through which I saw a gathering of Moogles.

Fran knocked, and exchanged a few polite words with the Moogle who responded. She earned us a begrudging entry through which we had to stoop.

Inside, I breathed the raw, homebred moonshine, blinking tears away.

Because of the height of the ceiling, I knelt while Fran crouched. Considering the Moogle's suspicion of us and the price he asked, I demanded a taste before we negotiated the conditions of barter. The exasperated Moogle disappeared beneath his bar to fetch us a bottle.

The room's occupants otherwise ignored us.

'Your engineers completed preliminary assessments yesterday,' Fran mentioned. 'They were appreciative of Nono's existing changes.'

'I was impressed. It's an astounding display of skill on a total antique. How did he even learn—'

'I taught him. The first ship on which I gave service was a prototype version. For you?'

I had to think. Strange to think of my training aboard airships, my knowledge of their design as pure pretence, a cover.

'My first was a Fighter Class, an Archadian Air Cutter, though I served most of my tour on a Carrier Class as ordinary crew.'

'Matching exiles, we who meet in this maze.' Fran lidded her eyes, lazy.

The Moogle reappeared with the bottle and glasses. Pleased with the distraction, I tasted, then negotiated the transfer of ammunition in exchange for the bottle. The Moogles had the right of it, to barter in a town under blockade. Our coin was worthless.

Cross-legged, we tucked our knees beneath a low table and drank in a companionable calm, punctuated by the delicate forays into a shipboard understanding. Until we were drunk, and I, perhaps unwary.

Eventually, Fran asked me why I traded ammunition instead of any of the other providence the Moogle would have accepted.

'Ammunition's easy. Margrace will replace it for us.' I waved my hand, generous. 'It's a benefit to Balfonheimers anyway. If Archadia breaks through, the Moogles will put it to good use in defence of the town.'

'You're certain of such alliance? You make mock of Nono's stature and scorn the lizard skin of Bangaa. Tis an Archadian prejudice, as well as a Rozarrian one, and you have had the benefit of both cultures. What if Moogles bear similar despite for your furless excess?'

I frowned, ready to retort, then decided to listen.

'In whatever nation they stand, Moogles keep their alliances with one as primary. Hume nations run in parallel,' with a fingertip, Fran described a delicate wet line across the dusty floor between us, two, three, four. 'Dalmasca, Archadia, Rozarria, Nabradia, independent Bhujerba, isolate Balfonheim, the Holy Mount Bur-Omisace. The lines of nationhood form the warp of the world. Yet through these nations run the weft of our races, our associations.' Fran wet her fingertip again, and the parallel lines became a crosshatch. 'The fabric cannot exist without race or nation, yet even one as free as your history claims expects loyalty to lie with nation, not race.'

Not an abstract thinker, I hunted for factual examples against which to test Fran's words. Moogle bonds, whatever their nationhood, was a thing essential to the functioning world of today. Moogles upheld mail communications between the nations even in times of war. With their cultural liking for mechanics, Moogles transferred engineering and scientific knowledge fluidly, ensuring even something as secret as nethicite would not remain a secret for long.

'So a Balfonheimer Moogle would never fire those bullets at an Archadian one. Lucky for us Archadia won't let Moogles into their forces, then.'

'Fortune, is it? Archadia would weave our threads in their loom, and without Moogle threads present. What occurs, when they decide Bangaa threads are of no use in this fabric's weave? Viera? Or Rozarria?'

Staring at the warp and weft Fran had described, I followed my own thoughts, as the metaphoric fabric unravelled.

'Empire,' Fran said. 'The strangest of constructions.'

Moogles crossed national boundaries; to an extent, as did the other races. Yet Archadia could and had decided nethicite was worth total silence. I witnessed the purging of Draklor of foreign, alien influence under Dr Cid's directive. My Hume nature, my colouration, my ability to dissemble as Archadian protected me for long enough to escape. The Moogle engineers involved in the project had not my luxury.

Not that I had spared their fates a thought, when I fled Draklor.

In the low den, drinking Moogle moonshine, surrounded by fur and paws and dry conversation, I could not imagine a world solidly Archadian. The odd chill at Fran's words made me suddenly, fiercely involved with Balfonheim. Imagine, everyone here had so resoundingly thrown aside nationality, race, the damned warp and weft of Fran's indicative tapestry, for a self-interest that nevertheless admitted and allowed for the selfishness of others.

'Damn the Empire,' I said, suddenly, without any need to define which Empire.

To my surprise, every Moogle in the place raised a similar rousing cheer, and toasted one another.

Fran inclined her glass against mine. 'To freedom without democracy.'

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'That you've been caught up in this. Margrace's ploys—whatever he wants—'

Fran shrugged. 'I like the flying, the fight. Margrace gives us an opportunity to do so to effect. I am as involved as I wish to be.'

'And Balthier?'

She looked amused. 'On his desires, I do not speculate. You have the more interesting tale. Why do you fly where Margrace sends you?'

'Habit.' Unfairly succinct, with how willing Fran had been to speak of herself.

For compensation, I thought. For his blackmail. For the promise of a freedom being sanctioned by an authority I had never fully abandoned.

For the ability to redeem myself for my failure.

'Bad habit,' I added.

'Such loyalty, for an agent not born to Rozarria.'

'Without loyalty, a spy is little more than an overskilled gossip.'

Fran had a way of looking through people. 'How did you come to return to Balfonheim?'

'Have you heard the tale of the talking cockatrice?'

Fran shook her head, solemn.

'A young would-be hunter arrives fresh in Balfonheim, and on the hunt-board in the Whitecap, he sees a sign: Talking Cockatrice for Sale. He approaches the owner, who takes him directly to the cockatrice's pen. "You talk?" the young hunter asks. "Yer," the cockatrice replies.'

'Quite a shock, I imagine,' Fran murmured.

'Indeed. After the young hunter recovers, he asks, "What's your story?" The bird looks up and says, "Well, I discovered my voice talk when I was just a chick, after a man had made me his pet. I wanted to help him out, help his country out, so I went to the Emperor—they had me flying from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one suspected a bird would eavesdrop."'

'A savvy government.'

'If not a savvy bird, unfortunately. As the cockatrice continues, "I was their most valuable spy for eight years, but the constant travel tired me out. I requested a long-term position, thinking I'd work at the aerodrome, as undercover security. I'd wander around, ignored just like I'd been before, and listen in to suspicious characters, uncover smuggling rings. I thought I'd retire with a batch of medals.'"

'"So," the young hunter says, "What happened?"

'"Well," says the cockatrice, "I was given an undercover job for starters, and it did involve airships—I was sent in to spy long-term on the Empire's greatest enemy, keeping a track of characters well above suspicion. I uncovered some incredible dealings, but then, who'd believe it, I was discovered!"'

I paused. For a long, horrible moment, I felt the compression close in.

Draklor's doors locked and bolted, the labs windowless, constricted, even the air brought in through secured services. The days of my escape, the endless weeks, crawling through a maze of airducts. The flight from Archades after, followed, gunned down, my purloined airship dying around me with a metallic scream.

'"So I got out quickly, tendered my resignation, and that's how you find me here."'

Blessedly, Fran ignored of the irritating quaver in my voice. 'What does the young hunter say to the bird's incredible story?'

The parable would continue to serve its purpose. 'Rightly enough, the young hunter is amazed. He asks the owner how much he wants for the cockatrice. "Ten gil," the owner says, disenchanted.'

'The bird is worth so little?'

'Almost exactly what the young hunter says. "'Ten gil! But the bird is amazing, have you heard him talk! Why sell him so cheap?"' I swallowed the dregs in my glass. 'The owner says, "Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."'

When I poured again, I discovered our bottle empty.

Over the next few minutes, we discovered how unwise it was to remain seated while drinking, as the drunkenness only rose when we did. After cracking my skull, Fran struggling for evenness of expression, we succeeded in spilling through the door and into the street. For a moment, I stayed on my hands and knees, before Fran reminded me of the freedom to stand.

For some time, I thought the coruscating wonder of the sky a side effect of the moonshine. While I remained captivated, Fran noticed there were others in the streets, pointing at the selfsame sky with an air of panic.

Fran grabbed my arm, vice-like.

We stared as Balfonheim's protective paling shimmered, flickered, and then shattered into brilliant white shards.

Balfonheim no longer had a shield. For all that had gone before, our plans and Margrace's scheming, Archadia would take Balfonheim now, today.

Sobered, we ran for the Maenad.

* * *

The end nearly came via a classic suicide strike.

The sacrificial Valfarre from weeks before had been a scout, sighting and communicating the exact location of Balfonheim's paling generator. A diversionary skirmish this afternoon kept the Rozarrian defence occupied, so they were unaware of the sly action to their rear, where a stealth squad fired concentrated missile sweeps at the paling.

Brought to failure, the paling suffered a localised weakening, enough for one airship to power through. This airship knew exactly where it was going, descending in a violently fast trajectory, ending with its contact with the paling's generator.

Skystone on charged magicite—the explosion was vast. The Archadian follow-through attack came with such a small proportion of their numbers it would have been an insult, had I not known Balfonheim had no numbers for defence. The gun tower was sadly inadequate, while the Rozarrian Carriers, powerful and well-shielded, were situated too far away to rally.

Fran and I fought through the tangled crowd.

Balfonheim had no true civilians, nor unity, yet I expected everyone and their children's dogs to meet a ground attack, wielding anything with a sharp end. But an airship assault was lethal, skyborne, horrendous. Fran and I forced against the great fleeing tide from the quay, where Archadia made their approach.

When I saw the Maenad, I swore.

Descending the gangway calmly, Balthier wore a fresh white shirt, high-collared, leather trews almost faultless with shine, earrings dangling, with his only concession to the abrupt invasion being that he walked barefoot, as though interrupted while dressing for the role.

During a violent air raid, our resident madman decided this the right time to withdraw the Maenad's large, unstable skystone, and take it for a pleasant stroll.

The radiant green glow would be seen from the sky, a clear target. I, on the other hand, saw uplit strain in Balthier's shoulders, the grim clench of jaw, and the smallness of his steps.

'What are you doing?' I cried. 'If something hits that core—'

Across the distance, Balthier rolled his shoulders at me. 'Come on, Feathers! Our coffins await whatever we do; why care how we go?'

I sputtered.

'We're not going to die, I promise. You've heard what they say about the leading man.'

'That he's six short of a half-dozen?'

Fran moved forward, her hands held out. 'Help with your load?'

'If you will,' Balthier said, 'kindest thanks.'

Fran took the bottom end of the core and Balthier the top. Careful to avoid fast motion, they shared the weight to the horizontal. A strange procession, we inched along the ocean's curve, towards the northeast end, where the paling's generator was—or rather, had been. Smoke thundered into the sky from the remains, a thick diagonal column.

'—yet the likelihood of salvage is low,' Fran was saying.

'Seemingly not, Nono's already working,' Balthier replied. 'He had a couple of cousins over for a visit when the Archadians hit.'

'Fortuitous.'

'Isn't it, though. The gods might be smiling on us.' Balthier winked at me, over his shoulder.

Fran widened her eyes. 'Wish it on us not. The gods have an unpleasant sense of humour.'

Bemused by the unerring confidence, flinching at the sweeps of Valfarre and Remora that continued to ignore us, I followed.

* * *

'Hello, everyone! We're here. What a fine day for a get-together.'

'Apart from the invasion?' I asked.

'Purely atmosphere,' Balthier belittled the torn skies. 'Storms and firefights are nothing more than an apt backdrop for personal deliverance.'

Nono delivered a high-pitched 'About bloody time!' The gathered crowd otherwise ignored the skypirate's greeting.

The crowd was a disparate crew. Rozarrians and Balfonheimers stood ready, guns and an array of offensive and defensive spells targeted on sky and street. The bustle came from the workers, heaving and hauling the crumpled Valfarre Fighter with levers, float-spells and sheer muscle, unearthing what remained of the paling generator.

Ignoring the obvious destruction, the Archadian sweeps no longer targeted the area. We had an ample view, watching as Balfonheim was shot around us.

Six Moogles worked beside the generator's recovered scrap. Balfonheim's usual blacksmith, a Bangaa old enough to have gnarled, smoothed mangled parts in an impromptu forge, while a wide-eyed Hume cast Mist into the flames to keep the heat constant.

The generator's magicite would have exploded on impact, also the Valfarre's skystone. Nevertheless, the recovery of the magicite's twisted casing elicited a rousing cheer from the Moogles. Nono stripped the buffers from the socket, and hastened them to what I recognised as a jury-rigged paling generator.

With little else to do while the team worked, Balthier and Fran propped the Maenad's skystone core on one end. At ease, they used it for a leaning post, watching the motions with bright-eyed interest.

I took a deep breath. 'You're leaning on an explosive.'

'I know. My old man manufacted them, remember?' Balthier rapped his knuckles down the side of the core, which precipitated a high-pitched bell tone.

In my periphery, the crowd flinched, as a single organism.

'Gods—!'

'Calm down,' Balthier said, scornful. 'I know this lump like a sweetheart. She needs it rough, a tap would scarce get her off.'

'Manufacted skystone,' Fran offered, 'of this vintage and mass, would need at least a bullet's strike to explode.'

I shuddered. 'Standing this close to one during an invasion, I suppose I should feel better?'

'Wouldn't dare suggest how you should feel, Feathers,' Balthier said, breezily.

Fran nodded. 'An individual in command of one's own emotions is in command of the world.'

'Someone owes me a full body massage after this,' I ground out, 'because every muscle in my body is a knot in expectation of the e—'

''Ware heads—' a Moogle shrilled, followed by a loud clattering bang from the metal tangle behind me.

I narrowly avoided disgracing myself.

'Sorry,' Nono called. 'But I think we've got the connections set up.'

'You'd want to know, Nono,' Balthier said, 'because if they're not equalised, you know this darkling,' he rapped the core again, 'goes off.'

'I never would have known without your input,' Nono said, dark eyes gormless and wide. 'Not with my decades of experience, kupo.'

Balthier nodded at me. 'Mustn't rustle our little birdie's feathers.'

Meanwhile, the attack continued.

I lent my arm to the salvage effort. Repairs and manufacture were punctuated by flinches and mild panic every time an Archadian ship screamed by. Black smoke streaked the sky. Crackling flame and the echo of conflict drowned out the sound of the ocean.  
After eons, we were ready to engage.

The magicite typically used within a paling generator was not skystone, but the Maenad's ancient stone, a cruder structure than contemporary skystone, would serve.

Skystone depended on a closed circuit for its application, each end touching a buffer simultaneously. Contemporary engines came with a loading mechanism ensuring perfect synchronicity, preventing feedback and the resultant skystone explosion.

Nono had a spirit level and an impromptu winch.

A winch which would made our ancestors proud, admittedly. Likely the same ancestors who had built the Maenad.

I wept sweat as the skystone core swung up, over the tangled display of mechanical ingenuity, and down by increments. The last few inches were intolerable. As the core clicked into place, I sat down, my strings cut. I was not alone in my abrupt relief.  
The paling, a flickering, obvious shade of copper green, snapped into being.

Balfonheim began the clean-up.

The gun tower, as well as contingents of Rozarrian soldiers, chased the trapped Archadian Valfarres and Remoras to destructive ends. Through this, we sat by the paling generator, detached by celebration. As Balfonheim's immediate skies were rendered safe, the party escalated to spill out to the quayside, to the Whitecap, in a confetti of ash, embers, burning ozone and gunpowder. Moogle moonshine cheered our progress.

Considering my social efforts from earlier, the adrenaline and the latest liquid supplements did odd things to my chemistry. In the Whitecap's forecourt, I rediscovered the cheerful soldier from the dockyard, and learned his hands were as warm as his eyes. Affairs were continuing as expected, until I discovered Al-Cid Margrace took up position nearby, seemingly to stare me down.

Sadly, I thought, for all that his glasses made his opinion as opaque as his eyes.

When the Imperial mirage did not disappear, I startled, detach the soldier from my d�colletage, and staggered in Margrace's direction with some thought to defining the apparition's reality. Even Margrace had never worn his shirt unlaced past the navel, no matter the clime's humidity.

Yet Margrace was no illusion. The Balfonheim Liaison stood by his side, beneath a tattered awning on the quay. The Liaison gestured violently towards the glowing, tickling, clicking, unstable and yet functional paling generator.

A hand held me back from approach. 'The Balfonheim Liaison is displeased we've unofficially messed with their property.'

It was Balthier, breathing into my ear.

'That's a bit much,' I said, delirious. 'The Archadians mussed it first.'

'Considering Balfonheim bears no true property.' Fran was at my other side, arms folded.

I inhaled the alcohol off their words. They had been willing participants in the celebration. For some reason, the realisation dulled the edge of Balthier's usual arrogance. Even these skypirates were mortal, fallible enough to celebrate successes, a happy outcome not as expected as the skypirates made it seem.

'He thinks he's going to keep the town, after this.' Balthier affected disgust, delivered with a nod at the Liaison. 'After the Rozarrians and the Archadians leave, that Balfonheim's going to keep him on as mayor. Or a bloody pirate king!'

Margrace was listening to the Liaison with an air of tolerance.

'It might suit some,' I said, hesitant, 'if Balfonheim united enough to declare themselves a neutral city-state with the Holy Mount.'

'It would suit Margrace,' Balthier hiccuped. 'Rozarria. The sky city Bhujerba. But it would hardly please great Archadia. Anyway, Balfonheim's unlikely to unite under a landlord brat.

'Margrace taps the wrong barrel,' Fran added.

'Property is hardly power,' Balthier agreed. 'There's a saying, Feathers, that when a skypirate starts counting his loot, he's nothing more than a thief.'

Fran inclined her head at the unlikely duo. 'What would you think, if Margrace succeeds with another?'

'Installing his own pirate king? Never happen. But it'll be fun watching while he tries.'

Margrace discovered he could silence the Liaison by regarding him intently, as if listening to every word in full preparation of repeating the speaker's conversation back at them. The Liaison stuttered to a silence, as though the scrutiny made him aware of the nonsense he was talking.

Thus freed, Margrace came to us, and regarded us in turn.

'You've put my property to inappropriate use, Balthier.'

The skypirate twisted his lips. 'I rather think the skystone was our property to begin with. You looted it, then gave it back.'

'The Maenad has been chartered, salaries negotiated and co-signed. Yet without a skystone core, how shall my airship fly?'

I winced, bracing myself.

Balthier looked once at Fran. 'Without a port to defend,' he drawled, 'then I should hardly be keeping my side of the bargain even if I could fly. Should we have left Balfonheim to fall?'

'An extreme action to take—'

'The Maenad was the only ship in port with a skystone old enough to work.' Insultingly direct, he looked Margrace down, eyes dragging to his groin, where the open shirt framed Margrace's flies. 'One circumstance where size does matter.'

Fran's expression assumed, in her drunken state, an incredibly elegant smirk.

'Nevertheless,' Margrace said, 'you've clipped your own wings. Hardly a motive driven by profit. Have we misjudged you?'

'I've clipped your wings,' Balthier reminded him. 'Not mine.'

A longer silence, which Balthier felt no need to fill. The skypirate was well able to resist Margrace's subtle methods of manipulation.

'I will see what we can do about requisitioning a new skystone,' Margrace said, at last. 'Meanwhile, Balthier, do try to avoid engineering further precipitous acts of heroism.'

'Heroism!' Balthier was astonished. 'Dear Margrace, do I look like a hero?'

'Of the vagabond archetype, perhaps.'

'I am a skypirate. A leading man, perhaps, but not in any way a hero. Heroes die, and I don't.' Balthier paused, considering. 'You might want to tell the Liaison to expect an invoice for my engineer's labour, and the capital cost of the skystone.'

'Do I seem a messenger?' But Margrace was smiling.

Lazy eyes roamed across Margrace's presentation again. 'You do seem to be something else.'

One eyebrow rising, Margrace turned away, evidently to hunt out the Liaison. Freed from Margrace's scrutiny, he had chosen to scold three drunk Moogles, propped against a low wall near the paling generator. As none of the Moogles present had been involved in the salvage job, the three regarded his tirade with dumbfounded expressions.

Margrace made Balthier a small bow. 'It shall be an inestimable pleasure to hand-deliver your invoice.'

'Glad to oblige,' Balthier grinned.

Margrace stepped before me before I could escape the unavoidable inquisition. He studied my ash-covered state of swaying disgrace.

'As for you,' he said, disapproving. 'Was it so necessary to risk yourself so? Am I so hard a taskmaster that death is an acceptable escape?'

Once, the air of ownership, of wounded paternalism, had charmed me. A master craftsman who clutched so at his tools would not easily abandon them to the myriad fates that could befall a spy.

A great whoosh of disbelief, near hysteria, swept over me. 'Yes, it did seem rather necessary at the time, saving Balfonheim.'

With his left hand, Margrace made what the mudra of despair.

The affectation irritated me. Only the Rozarrian ruling class bothered to manipulate the mudra; I had learned a language obsolete but for between Margrace and his little birds. Still I did not understand him, if ever I had.

I turned my face away.

Margrace withdrew. When he spoke again it came soft. 'Ask my permission first, if you ever again feel the need to explode yourself in the company of strangers.'

'I'll explode myself when and where I want,' I told the cobbles, 'in whoever's company I choose.'

With a sharp exhalation, Margrace turned on his heel and left. I stared after him, unblinking, until the streetlamps blurred to stars.

Balthier patted my shoulder. 'We'll get some use out of you yet, Feathers. Welcome aboard.'


	6. A Raft To Save The Remnant

'Did you see what they're doing to our hull, Nono?' Balthier's voice came resonant with gloom.

I stopped, twelve rungs from the engine deck, and decided I would wait this one out. After all, I had heard it before; yesterday, Balthier lauded what they were doing to our hull.

'Drop down screens,' the pirate answered himself. 'Flick of a button, and our cheerful little cargo ship becomes a gap-toothed leering killer.'

'I have been watching,' Nono said, exasperated. 'I've been down here all week. Did you see what they're doing to our gun deck, kupo?'

'They're disguising a missile launcher,' Balthier said, morose.

'Exactly! So why don't you teeter-totter up there and share your excitement around a bit?'

Nono had never been good with Hume subtleties, Fran had told me before.

'Excited,' Balthier said, outrage shaking his mood. 'Excited—!'

'Kupo—oh, are we on a different tack today? Ah, it's horrible! They're turning us into killers, bad Rozarrians! Nasty Rozarrians!'

I judged the timing safe to drop to the deck.

Nono looked up at me and away. Shaking his head, he found a task taking him to the far side of the hold. Perched unmoving on his crate, Balthier regarded the fitters, welders, and the ordinance crew transforming the Maenad from a classic model into a one-of-a-kind battleship beast.

Whatever ethical riddle had the skypirate swinging between boyish enthusiasm and this frequent gloom, I had more concern for the airship's ballast. Woe to think what would happen if any of the aggressors fired at—or even near us.

Balthier sank his chin into cupped hands. ''Lo, Feathers. Are we making progress, then, by your slanted definition of the term?'

In one discussion with Fran, between drinks five and six of a ten-drink parade, we speculated Balthier's angst a combination of pre-operation stress, the tension of waiting, and irritation at being forced again to a field of war he chose to leave behind.

'Not that his attitude matters,' I had hastened to assure Fran, 'but can we rely on him to make the right decisions, like this? He's not going to break and run again, is he?'

'If he runs,' Fran said, 'it would not be because of the breaking.'

'If he tends to irrationality—well, I don't want to pull rank on him.'

'A simple solution, then.' Fran poured the next round. 'Don't.'

Fran would back him, whatever he did.

Despite Fran's faith, Balthier did not spare her his unease. When he approached her, she adopted a patient, quizzical expression making it clear she had no answer to give.

I affected the same expression now, in answering Balthier's question. 'We're meeting our milestones.' A spontaneous maliciousness to add, 'In fact, have you seen what they're installed on the gun deck?'

That night proved sticky, humid, the new holes in the Maenad's hull a benefit for the breeze. Our meal we took on the dock, after, the dishes abandoned in the Maenad's kitchen sink.

Fran cornered Balthier there and demanded his true irritation.

I was on the ladder again, screened from their view by the shaft. Unused to others aboard their ship, neither was aware of how their conversations traveled. I would do my utmost to ensure they never had cause to realise.

'There's four assault guns in the hold.' Balthier drummed his fingers on the bench. 'Four.'

'Floor mounted,' Fran noted.

'Specialised business, those. Close range use, a brutal kick to them. Not like the missile launcher. You know what assault guns are for.'

'Yes.'

'I had wondered, you know,' a trick of the echoes, but Balthier's voice shook, 'how Margrace thought we were to keep our supply ship secret. The first survivors would communicate our ship's make and model directly to the Archadian fleet.'

'There are ways to avoid being seen, especially when conducting an ambush.'

'Something always goes wrong.'

Fran tried humour. 'Typically we would exploit that.'

'Errors aren't always in my favour. Something goes wrong. The survivors eject. They sight us, recognise us, and then&madsh'

'Close range fire, 'pon the survivors. We've done worse, between us.'

'Goes against the grain for me,, Master of Weapons.' Balthier mocked Fran hard and sharp with that old title; champion of gladiatorial matches, the dirty deaths of the arena. 'Even the worst of skypirates hoist their flag before firing.'

'You've warred before.'

'And I didn't bloody like it!'

'Nor did I,' Fran said, her tone level. 'Who would call survival a pleasant game? No way over that river but to swim, no way out from the maze but to venture further in.'

'Spare me the mysticism, please. Gods, every code of conduct goes to hang if we fire on survivors. The intent of war is—ah, who am I to talk on intent. But no sane man goes to war to kill individuals.'

'I rather thought war was fought to win.'

'What victory, if it comes from the shadows?'

Fran did not answer.

'This, love, this, is why spies should not be involved in wars. Theatrical, deceptive, sneaky bloody Margraces. Even if my life was dishonest, my death could be pure.'

I said a silent curse. Our tireless leading man, the eminent survivor, was more than shaken to be talking of his own death.

'Do we have a choice?' Fran asked. 'You've made yours.'

'That,' Balthier said, 'is precisely what grieves me now. I'll do what the script demands, and hate it.'

'Good,' Fran said.

'Good?'

'Good,' Fran repeated, firmly this time. 'Small point searching for reasons to make murder easier. Atrocities should never seem easy.'

The silence fell, punctuated by a boiling kettle. I would have thought them gone if not for the lack of footsteps.

I resumed my climb to the kitchen. Balthier sat on the counter, teacup in his hands, while Fran leaned against the sink, gazing through the porthole, unseeing.

I erupted into the silence, sadly limited in my potential for engineering a subject change. 'They're installing the launcher on the gun deck tomorrow.'

The steam from Balthier's tea scattered as he snorted. 'What does your Margrace think we're going to do with launcher, I ask you. Barely enough to scathe a Carrier, too slow to take on a Fighter. We might as well be crewing an Atomos.'

'Muzzle loaded,' Fran said, with a sorrowful shake of her head. 'In this day and age.'

'A sheer disgrace of obsolete technology,' Balthier said. 'And we're supposed to be a battleship.'

* * *

Knowing how close the Maenad's confines would soon become, we usually took our meals anywhere but. That evening, we patronised the Whitecap, when the unexpected sound of cheering overcame the ocean's wave.

Balthier raised his head. 'Someone's happy tonight.'

'Many someones. A placard-bearing rally, demanding the expulsion of certain young Archadian ingrates?'

'A rousing celebration, more like, in acknowledgement of my sheer self-sacrificing brilliance.' Balthier smirked at his yellow bread, even as a sardine slithered off and landed just shy of his lap.

'How odd.' Fran's fingernails clicked on her pitcher of ice-cold water—between one night and the next, the beer had been "withdrawn from sale". 'Considering our presence here and the cheer elsewhere.'

'Perhaps they celebrate your absence?' Nono blinked at Balthier, gormless.

'Almost sounded like a joke, Nono.' Balthier chased his sardine along his leg. 'Do keep trying.'

Balthier, Fran, even Nono remained focused on their sparing meals, an attitude suggesting they had been shorted too often to disrespect even this dry fare. We spiced our degustation with further speculation:

'Someone discovered a can of prunes.'

'Archadia's withdrawn, recanted their ways, and become a nation of devout monks.'

'Margrace finally discovered what those buttons on his shirt are for.'

Even Nono toasted there, Fran grinning into her pitcher.

Catlike, Balthier ate his last escaping sardine in small, neat bites. 'Right, let's go find out. Three fingers of mahdu for the closest.'

Along the quay, Balthier stopped a passing girl with a flashy smile and an 'Excuse me, love—'. In moments we had our answer.

A skypirate's airship had run the Archadian blockade in spectacular fashion, wheeling between the Rozarrian Carriers, and crashed within a quick jaunt's distance of Balfonheim's paling. The Rozarrian airships placed quickly, turning off the worst of the Archadian pursuit, while a ground team raced out to salvage.

The skypirate had survived, if damaged, demanding to speak to Margrace immediately, and they were closeted even now.

While Balthier bid the girl a fair farewell, Nono turned to eye me, suspicious. 'Sounds like another Rozarrian plant.'

'I wasn't a plant,' I said. 'I came to Balfonheim of my own accord.'

'Of course you did,' Nono snorted.

Balthier joined our group again, dusting off his palms as though from manual labour. 'Too much to hope the war resolved itself.'

'Or Margrace buttoned his shirt?'

Nono scuffed the cobbles. 'I want those three fingers. Maybe salvage means fresh tins of fruit, kupo?'

'Tins aren't fresh.'

'You know what I mean,' Nono said, wistfully. 'Fish and bread is getting a bit stale.'

'Not to mention the gruel,' Fran added.

'And the crab's depressingly tired,' Balthier added. 'A choice between paintstripper or moonshine is not what I'd call an adequate wine line.'

I crossed my arms, exasperated. 'And you lot haven't even been behind the blockade all this time.'

'Maybe Margrace can use his own pawn now,' Fran said. 'Our involvement in his ploy is surely unnecessary, now he has one of his own?'

Balthier's lips thinned, his expression unreadable.

As events resolved themselves, we discovered the other airship not so lucky as the Maenad. Shot to pieces, the crash landing had done what Archadia had not. Neither ship nor pilot would fly again.

Except Nono proved right: salvage did indeed mean food, which had brought on the cheers.

The skypirate-cum-spy delivered one last critical item: an updated Archadian flight pattern, showing the paths and patrols of everything from Dreadnaughts to Fighters.

As navigator, Fran focused on memorisation. For our daytime bluff to succeed, we had to fly in the ranges Archadia dictated for its cargo ships. For our subversive actions to succeed, we had to know we would not come into the visual range of a second patrolling airship while we were destroying the first.

The rest of us galvanized at the thought of action, at last. Five days at the most, finalising our departure from Balfonheim, before time made the flight pattern obsolete.

Margrace delivered the final necessary item close to midnight, in person.

It came hidden in a coffin, ominously so, with six blank-faced soldiers handling the weight.

Balthier regarded the coffin's approach, his eyebrows climbing. 'The cloak-and-dagger must come to you diplomats naturally.'

'On the contrary, it is a hard lesson to learn.' Margrace gave his delivery a certain gravity. 'Bluntly speaking, Balthier, I would advise you to leave as soon as possible. Within three days at the most.'

I protested, 'There's little time to practice manoeuvres—at least an extra day, Margrace, the flight patterns will hold true for that much longer.'

'Improvise,' Margrace said. 'If you wait, you may not be able to get out. My comrade brought word. Archadia has destroyed the portion of our fleets who moved to the kingdom of Nabudis' aid. As of two days ago, Nabudis was under full assault. We have not had word since.'

'Well, well, well.' Balthier spoke, seemingly, for the sake of filling silence.

'A second reason for a hasty departure,' Margrace gestured at the coffin. 'Within lies a skystone suited for the Maenad's make, at full capacity.'

'I never would have guessed,' Balthier said.

'Balfonheim is not pleased to surrender such a powerful source of Mist to unknown purpose, not when this could be turned to weaponry, or defence. Therefore I claimed the skystone before others could. The revelation of loss will come quickly enough.'

The silence, of gulls and a lapping ocean, was almost mournful.

'If Nabudis has fallen, then why are we flying still?'

'We do not know if Nabudis has fallen. There are many reason for silence, not least of which is our lack of contacts, within this blockade. But most importantly,' tiredly, Margrace took his glasses off, 'You are under charter.'

'I don't know,' Balthier said, slowly, 'what side you're playing, Margrace.'

'Your speculation offends.'

'I do try.'

'All you need to know, skypirate: you are on my side.'

The skystone's coffin was brought aboard, in solemn company.

* * *

Hangovers, even from moonshine, afflicted Balthier and Fran with an unconscionable energy. Shortly before noon, I staggered into the hold to find Balthier with his sleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in among the Rozarrian engineers completing the fitout.

'Not bad,' I heard an engineer say, clearly impressed.

I followed the engineer's gaze, discovering Fran out of her leathers, hair piled atop her head as high as her ears. She wore a filched Rozarrian flight suit, form-fitted as they were, zippered to the neck to spare her from the sparks of her welding.

I interrupted him with a glare. 'Eyes to yourself, grunt.'

The engineer looked bemused. 'What? It's always nice to find an above-decks crew who knows the practical side.'

'I'll bet it is.'

Truth be, Balthier and Fran's willingness to involve themselves in Nono's belowdecks world inspired the Rozarrian artificers. Respect was hard-won aboard ship.

Would that I could have believed respect for skill might apply to our gun crew 'volunteers', who were due at any moment.

* * *

Personnel delivered their volunteers before I'd the chance to splash away the night's crust: a ruckus rose from the quayside.

I hovered at the head of the gangway, watching in shock. Balthier and Fran passed behind me, their tasks finished. Balthier paused briefly, patting my shoulder thoughtfully before he left. 'All fun and games, they look.'

There were four full-sized Bangaa, one short one, a sole one-eyed Hume, and not a Rozarrian among them but for the soldiers leading them by the chain.

Shackled, they looked like what they were: prison dregs, and brawlers.

My hung-over heart sank further.

Their only uniform was their belligerence. Stinking of booze, cursing and cuffing at each other as they stumbled along, one Bangaa stopped dead and stared up at the Maenad, aghast.

'Me brother, ye didn't just draft us to that!'

A verbal melee broke out. Three of the Bangaa blamed the fourth for signing them out of their cosy cells, with days of leisure ahead of them. By the snarling, the fourth was hardly taking the insults. Meanwhile, the Hume and the smallest Bangaa, barely Moogle-height, inched as far away from the brawlers as their shackles would allow.

With bored familiarity and the butts of their pikes, the Rozarrian soldiers separated the brawling foursome. 'Shut up and stay shut up!'

'Or what?' a female Bangaa bawled out. 'Or ye'll find a fate worse than crew on a deathship? Told us it were a battleship, ye did!'

The dominant Bangaa, by his brands and markings, stepped in again and demanded silence with shout.

Then I recognised the dominant Bangaa—the brutal bastard from the mob brawl days ago, the first to strike, and so enraptured of his delirious bloodlust he'd chased us up the street. He and his kind had been so disorderly, even a riot couldn't mask them, and soldiers had put them into lockup.

Margrace expected me to keep this lot in line? On Balthier's ship, without any foreesable backup from a superior officer? I dreaded the thought of attempting to run this lot by the skypirates' standard of vote or discussion.

Despite his menacing air, the dominant Bangaa failed to silence his cohort, subduing them only. A taunt from the female provoked him: he threw his constraining Rozarrian from the quayside into the sand below, and whirled on the rest. A clawed fist shoved the female into the other protesting Bangaa, dragging everyone along the chain, involved or not, to the cobbles.

The dominant resisted the fall by digging in his claws. 'Ye lot, ye bleeding crabbit mob, git back into line! Was brawling what got ye here, and here ye'll stay. Be scant a month on the ship, or twelve in the locker, and either way I'll be on yer minging backs! You want me on your backs for a month, or for twelve?'

The gangway trudge took place in sullen obedience.

On arrival, the dominant Bangaa grinned at me, his sensitive nostrils flaring in instant recognition. 'Hoi, cleverpants. How's it going, then?' He squinted, tongue flicking between teeth.

The one-eyed Hume cleared his throat, leaning out of the morass. 'Report for duty, mate.' The Hume met my disbelieving gaze and nodded, solemn. 'That's Ba'gamnan, ma'am.'

'Reporting for duty,' Ba'gamnan dutifully intoned.

'Welcome aboard.' I spared the sarcasm for later. 'You've met most of us, haven't you?'

'If but in passing.' Ba'gamnan seemed pleased with himself. 'Know the backs of yer mob, I do. Cowardly buggers, led by a philandering waste of sky.'

The thought occurred: I would be voluntarily putting Ba'gamnan and his mob behind the most powerful guns Margrace could provide. A distant hope that I could convince them to aim the guns in the right direction.

'Live to fight another day, as they say.'

Ba'gamnan laughed, loud and long. 'Ach, we like it, me and me brothers and sister. If'n we're crewing this pile of junk, leastways a yellow captain's like to get us out alive!'

The Bangaa siblings continued to amuse themselves at the expense of Balthier's reputation. The overly-familiar slurring match did not allay my suspicions of possible mutiny.

Gijuk and Bwagi were Ba'gamnan's brothers, Rinok his sister. Their relative experience surprised me: they rattled off an impressive compliment of artillery service. On Archadian airships, startlingly enough, even if the only service Archadians allowed by those not Hume took place in the skyless hold. They had left Archadia, Ba'gamnan explained, to answer the lure of well-paid hunts and head-hunting duty only found in Balfonheim.

'How about you two, then? I suppose you're ex-12th Fleet generals.'

The Hume was Rikken. 'No ma'am. Most recently I've served in the Bhujerban irregulars as a caravan guard, and a term or two of monster-duty and refugee escort for the monks on the Holy Mount. I'm a career mercenary, if you will. I hunt when I have to, but mostly prefer to the fight.'

'Know much about a gunnery crew's duties?'

'Not really, but a fair bit about fighting.' A rueful grin. 'Got thrown in the brig couple of days before this lot for beating up an old friend.'

'A good friend?'

'The best,' Rikken agreed. The small Bangaa at his side snorted in disbelief, which made Rikken laugh. 'Not like I used a knife!'

Raz, the last, smallest Bangaa was the real surprise. 'Demolitions,' he said, abrupt. 'Had a long service in Bhujerba's mines, before this business between Bhujerba and the Archadians got out of hand. Was to be off working on the Henne Mine motherlode before the Archadians were hounded off. It's not been good since then, bit skint around. Hungry, like. I was put away for possession of incendiaries.'

Perhaps Personnel hadn't been as nasty to me as first thought. 'You can handle the munitions aboard? Be responsible for upholding their storage?'

'Storage! Come now, girl, what do ye want me to do, in truth?' Raz was blunt enough, eyes glinting with a warning hint. 'I can add shrapnel to yer standard missiles, a nip or two of secret ingredients to double the firepower. Hollowpoint yer assault gun's bullets so they'd flip a Bangaa so big,' he gestured at Ba'gamnan, 'on his arse even if ye nick his wee finger. Any grotty tricks; get me a jar of pepper and I'll make you some spice.'

I stared at Raz, and rubbed sleep from my eyes.

Rikken cleared his throat. 'You want us to muster in the hold, ma'am? So we can meet the captain and crew?'

I surrendered expectation of law and order. 'The hold's at the bottom of the ladder. It's where you'll be living from now on in, find a berth where you will. I'll go get the others.'

The Rozarrian soldiers, bloody and sore, unlocked the Maenad's new crew from their ankle chains, as I went in search of the skypirates. Fran's den in the commons was empty, though her dark leathers were there, discarded on the bunk. Her impressive array of weaponry gleamed thick with oil, the scent following me as I swung onto the ladder and called up the shaft.

'Balthier! Fran!' Thinking Fran's hearing someone sharper than Balthier's demonstrated selectiveness, 'Fran!'

The pair appeared in parts, Fran from the cockpit, still in her borrowed flight suit, opened to the navel without need for protection against sparks. A second later, hair dark and wet from his shower, Balthier appeared in the immaculate altogether.

I gaped, stunned enough I barely noticed the lather on half his face. Fran raised an eyebrow at my expression, then followed my gaze.

'You have something on your chin.'

Balthier split the froth with a grin. Fran dabbed at his chin with an inadequately delicate motion.

'What's wrong, Feathers?'

'Gun crew,' I managed. 'Mustered below. Introductions.'

'Can't they wait?'

'They can,' I said, resounding. 'Do dress, please.'

'Ah, why bother? Let's get this over with.' One hand hooked around his doorframe, Balthier stretched into his tiny cabin and grabbed a towel. With a well-mannered bow, he gestured Fran ahead of him. He scrubbed off the shaving lather, half his cheek stubbled, before wrapping the inadequate towel to spare his audience.

Fortunately, I had long since surrendered the vague hope Balthier would morph into an authoritarian captain of a type to command a rabble's respect.

We discovered the gun crew in various states of loiter. Eyeing the newcomers with suspicion, Nono leaned from the engine deck and shouted an insult if any dared use the recently installed assault guns as their props.

'Balthier's the pilot,' I indicated Balthier, who bowed, shallow considering his brief skirt. 'Fran's the navigator. Nono up there, he's the engineer.'

Balthier eyed the crew, then draped himself in matching disarray on a portion of the ship's anatomy. Fran found the ladder more to her satisfaction, propped between the verticals.

'I'm supposed to inspect you, but there's not much to inspect.' Balthier shook his head. 'Shallow as a half-dug hole.'

The gun crew thought about the unlikely poses of both pilot and navigator with disbelief. Rikken's eyes fixed on Fran, his grin swelling.

Balthier's lids narrowed at the unwitting Hume. 'You find Viera amusing?'

Rikken startled. 'No.'

'Pity. I rather like a sense of humour in my crew, and Fran's got a delivery to die for. In situations like these,' Balthier rubbed his hands together, 'you would want to be able to laugh. Just look at yourselves.'

Ba'gamnan and his sibs communed, shoulders angling with aggression, obviously deciding Balthier's words came as an insult. 'And what, precisely, dae ye find sae amusing about us?'

'Lizards!' Balthier announced. 'Bangaa, in a gun crew, when Bangaa can barely see? Margrace gives me a one-eyed Hume; dare I mention the lack of depth perception? In a gun crew? Like as not you'll shoot me in the back than target an Archadian dreadnaught. By accident.'

Ba'gamnan snarled. 'See a lot ay yer back, willnae we?'

'Calling me a coward, Ba'gamnan? After all our favourable associations?'

'A yellow striped, white feathered coward.'

Balthier slapped his palm with his fist. 'You'd be right!'

Ba'gamnan looked bewildered.

'Ye gods, make a loud noise near me and I'm up and running. Who knows why Margrace thinks I can take this ancient old piece of shit into a warzone and stealthbomb Archadia's best. You lot can't fire straight, the navigator's more interested in oiling her leathers, and as for our resident little birdie, she doesn't even want to be here. Hilarious. No. No. Ridiculous, that's what it is. What odds do any of you give us for survival?'

While he spoke, Balthier paced, a study in melodrama. The crew watched, fascinated the naked madman and his camp little overacting. When so prompted they muttered comments, from disbelief that Balthier admitted the 'truth' of the situation, and agreement at the farcical nature of the endeavour.

'This whole affair is absurd,' Balthier went on, emphatic. 'Once skyborne, we're dependent on her—' he waved at Fran, who had one arm thrust elbow-deep inside her flight suit, scratching audibly at a sweaty under-breast— '...and the Archadian flight patterns she's memorised. Can't carry the maps, Margrace says, oh, no, just in case we get boarded.'

Fran lowered her gaze, loose hair a veil scarce hiding the smile. Balthier scowled in compensation. His face was alive with emotion. Adrenaline?

'I don't suppose any of you can navigate, can you?' With an about-turn, Balthier exuded hopefulness, but the Bangaa and the Hume shook their heads in unison. 'Of course not, you're as useless as we are for this. I suppose none of you can pilot.'

Bwagi raised a hand, then glared at the tentativeness and punched it high.

'Oh, right, fantastic,' Balthier enthused. 'I suppose you can pilot with a ring speed below seven hundred revs, can you?'

'No one can do that.'

'I can,' Balthier was instantly glum. 'Only I can't do it forever, can I. More long, sleepless nights piloting this hulk of worthless crap on total power-down, just to creep past the Archadians. If we're lucky, we'll get to loot a couple before we get nabbed or crash—'

'We can loot?' This from Rinok, her interest moderating the growl.

'Of course. We're skypirates, aren't we? We'll stay low, avoid encounters, loot where we can, and meanwhile we take the Maenad along the quickest route away from this mess.'

'This looting,' Gijuk continued, 'it's equal shares, right?'

'Equal according to role and injury,' Fran inserted, quick and quiet.

The conversation unfurled from there. I watched, astounded.

Engagingly repetitive, Balthier asserted the airship's worthlessness on the open market, or even as a private vehicle: its cumbersome handling, the pain he endured trying to find parts for repairs. He repeated the essential skills of himself, myself, Fran and Nono, how vital our knowledge for enduring the Archadian onslaught. In the minds of these possible mutineers, he showed the Maenad as a worthless steal, and that a knife in any of our backs would backfire on the stabber.

Balthier showed the carrot then: the gun crew would profit from any successful encounter, and could rest assured the above-decks crew were doing all they could to get out of the warzone safely.

'S'better odds than staying in Balfonheim,' I heard Ba'gamnan growl, the others nodding along. 'Me brothers and sister, did I not steer ye right, towards the scent of money?'

While not precisely a loyal and efficient crew, it was one less likely to kill us than they had been twenty minutes prior.

That performance, I realized, was no small cog in Balthier's engine of survival.

* * *

The ammunition arrived at dusk, when the Whitecap's early closing time had driven away casual quayside wanderers. I paced our dock, supervising the loading.

'Want a hand with the haul, Feathers?'

'I'm surprised you're willing to dirty your hands.'

Balthier spread those and shrugged, grinning. 'I'm willing to dirty several things.'

'No,' I said, then felt the odd urge to add, 'but thank you. Let the Bangaa do it. I remember how you handled the mist core, you have little respect for handling explosives.'

From beneath his shirt, Balthier pulled an intricately engraved classic gun, a Rigel, of all things. He spun it through his hands, aimed and mimed a fire. 'What do you call that, then?'

'Flashy. Not respectful. How many hours of your day did you waste learning how to do that?'

'Hours on watch duty,' Balthier corrected. He arranged himself against the doorframe, surveying where soldiers were stacking our crates four high. 'I rather thought it time well-spent. How are your lot settling in?'

'After the tantrum you threw about how worthless we are? They're well enough. Bickering over bedspace.'

'If it goes badly, Feathers, we'll be seeing action tomorrow night. In two nights, if it goes well and we can get into position. Are you confident?'

The topic of confidence drew my mind well away from Archadian attack. 'You didn't mean what you said to them before, did you, Balthier?'

'About your worthlessness?'

'That you would route out of this mess.'

He paused. 'Define "mess".'

'What?'

'The quickest route out of the war, so to speak, is to do what Margrace has asked. The quickest route away from Margrace's suggestive little blackmail? Ah, well, that would be to make the blackmail void. Which requires me to do what he asked.'

'Odd,' I said. 'You can't lie.'

'Not can't, love. I don't like lying. It's another chance of being caught out.'

I smiled. 'Yes, I can see how you'd think so. Ffamran.'

Balthier's lips drew tight. 'So how are they, Feathers?'

'They're ok. I'll know better by tomorrow.'

The hold's screens were raised, awarding us a full view of the loading. Ba'gamnan glared at us, and threw his burden into the hold with a force that cracked the packing. Shells plinked to the deck.

Balthier arched an eyebrow. 'That's ok, is it? Or is it respect for the handling of explosives?'

'That's not ok. But it is better than it could be.'

When Rikken and Bwagi took up an argument over the crate Bwagi unloaded into Rikken's previously claimed sleeping area, I left the crew to it. I retreated from dock to quayside, breathing salt air.

I hadn't expected Balthier to follow, nor Fran to materialise from the shadows and join him.

'You look like you know where you're going,' Balthier said.

'In hunt of food,' I replied, wry. 'Would you care to join me?'

Balthier and Fran shrugged at each other. 'Probably worth trying out one of the mess halls at this stage.'

'Sardines and yellow bread,' Fran said, sadly.

—except our forward progress was interrupted at the base of the dock, where the Rozarrian cohort appeared, carrying one last large, indiscreet packing case. Unlike the ammunition crates, this one was unmarked.

I thought of the coffin.

Balthier picked up the pace, querying the soldier about contents.

'Don't know what it is.' The soldier took advantage of the pause to wipe sweat from his face. 'It's marked "not to be opened without prior authority". For you to load, but I think you're to wait for Margrace—'

Fran stepped forward, and in a single motion, broke off the lock.

'Hey—'

'Terrible thing,' Balthier said smoothly, 'these rust attacks, crumbling hinges, locks, swords. I hear it's the salt air, so unforgiving.' With both hands, Balthier lifted the lid.

The case was full of Rozarrian uniforms.

* * *

When the crates were loaded, the Maenad's crew, above and belowdecks, had settled in on the shore for an early supper and one last Balfonheim sunset.

Six soldiers came down the dock with a jingle of mail and armour, drawing our attention. I looked up, glum. One last meal uninterrupted was too much to ask.

The lieutenant ignored Balthier even as the skypirate stood, only to brighten when he saw me. 'Want the good news?'

'Margrace truly did button his shirt?'

'You've all been invited for a last supper.' He studied our bread and cheese, the latter revealed from one of Fran's secret stashes. 'Of better range than that.'

We followed.

While we had been otherwise occupied, the main marketplace had been converted into a celebration. Lanterns strung on rope crisscrossed the street, tables arranged on the cobbles with ample room for circulation on both sides. Soldiers staffed cauldrons and barbeques, with a surprising range of foods available. Similar to Fran's cheese stash, I suspected—kept in reserve for the last hoorah.

Of a sudden, I was depressed.

Circulating, one might have thought this a happy gathering, if it wasn't for the expressions of the faces of those who knew what facts there were. The High Marshal stood on his table at one point, delivering a half-heart speech in pompous declaration of nothing at all. The Balfonheim Liaison, yet angling for his imagined mayoral future among Balfonheim's rubble, gave the speech following, inciting displeased mutters. Al-Cid Margrace sat, a gravity to his expression that made my heart fall.

Balthier noticed too, and elbowed Fran to draw her attention. 'Go easy on the bottle. Not a good time to get drunk, tonight.'

She looked at Margrace, then the mug in her hand. 'The company hardly compensates the sacrifice.'

For once, Balthier did not play. 'That's not the expression of a tolerant man. We're leaving first thing, if not picking up our marching orders right now.'

'At least the food is good?' I offered.

We negotiated our way towards Margrace.

Last hoorah or not, the crowd displayed a certain bloody-minded pride. If Balfonheim emerged out of this siege, it would be unscathed in spirit and honour, with the firm resolve to become master of its own destiny.

Margrace seemed unaware of the undercurrent of strength, the autonomous collective. When we arrived at his table, he gave an impression of remote anticipation—almost anxiety. He looked at Balthier and Fran for a long time, wordless.

'Gods, you could make a stone weep. What is it, did your father die? Or did your bird come last?'

Emotion flared. Disbelief, shock, as if only now did Margrace realise what he took on, with a weapon hardly tempered for the task.

'You'll be all right,' Margrace stated, as if to assure himself.

'We're survivors,' Balthier replied.

Fran looked at Balthier. 'We have questions.'

'Please,' Margrace gestured at the bench opposite. 'Sit, eat, ask.'

Balthier did not. 'Our contract. And our cash advance.'

'Straight to practicalities?'

'I don't break my word,' Balthier said. 'I expect the same courtesy in return.'

'I wonder what your father would say to that. And the 12th Fleet.'

By now, the antagonism between the two men seemed lazy with familiarity.

Balthier shrugged. 'Fealty, yes, I'll break that. But not business arrangements. That is what this is, Margrace. This has never been our fight.'

'Your money and the contracts have been filed with the banks on the Holy Mount. My aide will provide you with the receipts. Anything else restricting your departure this evening?'

Balthier nodded, satisfied his earlier speculation proved true. 'The packing case. The do-not-open crate. It was handled rather clumsily and the lid popped open.'

Margrace was resigned to the fact. 'The contents will help you in reinforcing the myth of an invisible Rozarrian battleship.'

'Here I'd thought you wanted us to hold a costume party.'

Irritation surfaced then. 'Be aware of the gravity of what you attempt, and succeed.'

'Succeed in what? Pushing off the end for Nabudis, for Bhujerba, by another few weeks?' Balthier shrugged. 'Each battle comes as it comes, Margrace. I intend only to survive. Defining success in these foul times, I'll leave up to your kind.'

The irritation faded.

Margrace stood, and held out his hand. He regarded the skypirate with a vague regret, as if in recognition of something long-lost. Balthier stared back at him, mirroring, I realized, shocked, the same expression.

Balthier took Margrace's hand. Where I expected him to shake it, the skypirate again did the unexpected. Balthier bowed, bringing Margrace's knuckles to his lips.

'May you never sit on your father's throne, your Highness,' Balthier said.

'Faram,' Margrace said, fervently.

Then, as though they understood each other, nothing more was said.

Balthier turned to Fran, brisk. 'Time to martial the troops. Fran, take our little bird and collect the crew from this mess. I'll start the Maenad's checks while waiting.'

At midnight, we powered the Maenad to the slowest spin necessary for lift, and climbed, quiet to screen and sky. No one witnessed us go, the celebration having drawn the usual quayside lurkers.

In the streets below, the party was winding to an end, distant and delirious, as if the music and lantern waving trumpeted our departure.


	7. Seeking the Dawn

It was the first time I witnessed the Maenad fly.

Into the velvet darkness we climbed, slow and silent in that phase termed 'flying dark'. Yet we held steady. Balthier had an inestimable skill in such extreme circumstance, in his ability to blanket out distraction, focused on balancing the ship's off-kilter weight on two slow-spinning rings. He succeeded, not effortlessly, but as though the metal was an extension of his viscera.

Only Fran's voice penetrated that intensity.

From the rank of chairs behind their two, I leaned forward. 'Our course?'

Fran gave a bearing unexpected, almost in the opposite direction to that which we should tend.

Wary, I remembered Balthier's speech to the crew below, of his intentions to get out of the warzone as fast as he could. Fran's bearing would take us almost to the region of jagd nearest to Balfonheim. No airship could fly through jagd, not even the Maenad—Mist-laden winds and magicite-rich soil precluded the operation of skystone. Did the skypirates intend for us to coast the edge of that turbulent cloud, where no other airship would go, and disappear somewhere over the steppes?

'That's not what Margrace told the Rozarrian patrols, Fran.'

'Yet if we bear directly for the Archadian circuit, and a savvy navigator should plot our origin, what would it be?'

'—Balfonheim.'

'Deflection,' Fran said, as close to satisfied as I'd ever heard her. 'The ability to deflect a direct blow may well win the battle.'

'We're to hide in jagd?'

'The edges of the cloud. We will come around Balfonheim along the jagd, then shift our course to a nearby purvama. We will merge with the Archadian patrols unseen.'

'Balthier can do it? Skirt jagd without falling?'

'At full speed, yes. We will accelerate once beyond Balfonheim's air and the close Archadian watch.'

Eyeing his profile, lines and sharpness fixed on the horizon, I felt a grudging respect. This pair knew their business, knew what risks could deliver a worthwhile gain.

'Nono,' Fran tapped through on the comm. 'Our course is set. Be ready to power up in five.'

Balthier breathed out, heavily, a sound of relief.

* * *

Having already drilled the gunnery crew at loading and unloading our artillery, it plagued me that we had never chanced to fire. While we flew through desolate skies, it seemed as good a time as any to drill our crew.

Four hours past dawn, I disappeared belowdecks, woke the snoring lizard contingent and one raucously snoring Hume, and drilled their response to instruction. Innovation on their part was not exactly desirable.

The near-blindness of Bangaa did not concern me, nor their ability to target. Bearings would be called from the cockpit; so long as the Bangaa could adjust the guns, they would do. Should our bluff hold firm, we would fire at close range—not precisely threading a falling feather through a needle's eye.

When I returned to the cockpit, Balthier slouched, moulded to the pilot's chair. Jagd was invisible to the naked eye, the sky before us deceptively calm. Only Fran's console displayed the thick, shifting edge of the Mist-storm as a white noise. Tendrils reached and fell flat as the wind shifted.

Fran gave curt instruction in response to the motion. 'Two points port.'

Such an incremental distance, it surprised me the Maenad was sensitive enough to register it.

'Two points,' Balthier answered.

'Steady ahead.'

Into this tension, I announced, 'I'd like the crew to try a trial exercise.'

Balthier barely blinked. 'No. I'd have to bring us away from this jagd. Not now.'

'Come on,' I said, exasperated, 'We have to fire the guns before we engage our first battle, especially the missile launcher. We don't even know if they'll fire, or if the engineers did well enough reinforcing the hull against the recoil. If we are to fall apart, better to do it in relative privacy.'

Balthier muttered something dire at the deceptive sky. 'How do you know that there's not half a fleet of Archadian Remoras using the jagd as we are, to hide their lurking? Where do you think I learned to fly like this? It's a bloody Archadian tactic!'

I bit back the annoyance. 'How likely is it that a superior-powered fleet would need to bother with a deceptive—and dangerous—strategy?'

I could understand his tension, to an extent. We were underway, in a potentially fatal field. I covered my anxiety with the micro-tensions of drilling an unhappy crew. Balthier had no such recourse, only the endless horizon and Fran's quiet direction.

'If not now,' I said, 'then when? You know we need live exercise.'

A long, long pause. 'I really hate artillery, you know.'

I remembered him then as first seen on this ship, flashing his impotence at the Archadian attack.

Fran looked at Balthier's steel-tense forearm, veins starkly obvious, then his profile. 'She's right, it is necessary.'

A long, shuddering breath. 'All right. Get them ready, Feathers. I'll pull away from the jagd, you relay on my command. Only on my command, you hear?'

Adrenaline rising, I reached for the comm.

Prematurely, as it turned out.

* * *

Seven times Balthier gave his go, only to belay the order before I could relay it to the crew below.

Fran disappeared briefly and returned with a thermos of aged coffee, which hardly helped any of our nerves.

The eighth time, I left the comm. where it was and waited. I slurped from my beaker, eyes fixed on the back of Balthier's head.

'All right, what? I gave the go ten seconds ago!'

'By your previous record, that's enough time to change your mind more than once. What's wrong?'

Balthier swivelled his chair about. He sulked at his knuckles, eyes anywhere but meeting my gaze. 'The feeling, that's what's wrong.'

I pondered his feelings in detail. War-wary of the sound, the feel of a missile firing; frustrated at the necessity of weapons; uncertain of his commitment to Margrace's role for him. I wanted, needed demonstration of his obedience to necessity. Fran might trust him, but I did not.

'Is this more than grating your ill-oiled morals?'

'What morals?'

'Well, then,' I said, smiling.

Balthier rolled his shoulders, exasperated. 'Go on, then, do it. Fire. It's not like the Maenad's my airship.'

'No.' Fran's lips barely twitched. 'It's Margrace's.'

Aghast, Balthier stared at her. He shuddered.

'Spare your worries,' I said, hearty. 'This way, if the calculations are wrong, at least it's not your fault or your problem.'

For the eighth time that day, I picked up the comm. 'Gun crew at the ready.'

There came the heartening sound of instant response: running feet from below and above. Ba'gamnan's snarled confirmation rose from the hold's depths, where he commanded the numbers. Gijuk signalled the same from the missile launcher disguised on the gun deck, directly above the cockpit.

'Opening live exercise. Target to starboard, Archadian Atomos. Range two kilometers and closing. Bearing zero two five relative and moving astern—'

Two voices confirmed the bearing locked.

This is how events would pan: the Maenad would lurk in concealment, awaiting the approach of an airship. The airship would be locked into our targets before they could be aware of our presence. We would lower the screens that made the Maenad's hull appear whole, the floor-mounted assault guns primed. The concealment case around the missile launcher above would drop. We would fire, with intent to disable our opponent in the first few rounds. The last was essential, or our fundamentally defenceless Maenad would be reduced to shrapnel in the return fire.

Fortunately, this was only a drill.

I projected an air of tolerance, waiting for Balthier's command to fire.

He ground his teeth. 'I hope this is more than enough exercise for you, Feathers. I wouldn't have said you'd needed it, with your figure, but—'

I raised the comm. and gave order to drop the screens.

'No, wait,' Fran breathed. 'Hold! I see—what is that?'

I clenched my fist. 'Gun crew, belay that order and hold ready, if you please.'

'Och, come on!' Bagamnan growled. 'When are ye lot gonna give over? Me sibs are missing their midmorning nap for this?'

By then, I saw it too—a glint to the fore, approaching fast, right along the edge of the jagd where I had been certain no one but a madman like Balthier would fly.

A transformation took place. Businesslike, traces of sulk removed, Balthier wasted no breath on gloating. 'We're flying an Archadian flag?'

'Of course,' I said.

'Well, shit.'

'What? We can bluff, as we planned—'

'Out here, where no Archadian supply ship has any right to be?' Balthier shook his head, his eyes narrowed. 'Look how fast it's coming in, Feathers. It thinks we're an easy target.'

Fran said, efficient, 'It's a Mercuriot Fighter Class.'

'No, it's got to be a Remora, or a Valfarre, Archadians don't fly the Mercur—' I stared out of the cockpit, dazed, but even I could identify the airship's silhouette now. 'It's Rozarrian.'

'While us sitting stoned pigeons look the enemy.' Balthier had nerve, to sound so easy. 'Didn't Margrace alert the patrol that we'd be leaving?'

'What would it matter if he had? You two didn't tell the operations crew you were going to be scudding along the jagd rim, did you? They would have relayed our bearings elsewhere.'

'The Mercuriot shows sign of bringing its armaments to bear,' Fran said. 'We should fire first. Our guns remain at the ready.'

'Fire on our kind?' I snapped.

Fran faced Balthier. 'We have no allies in this field.'

Balthier alternated his gaze between Fran's display and the visual through the cockpit window. The Mercuriot's rings settled into a hold. The airship hung at rest, not rushed, each weapon atop that gun deck locking in on the defenceless-seeming Archadian supply ship.

Was I the true coward, to break that tension first? Or was it that I offered the worst way out?

'Call them, Balthier. Tell them who we are.'

Fran snorted.

'This is a secret mission,' Balthier said. 'Not my choice, but that's how Margrace wanted to play it. If there is an Archadian airship out there, watching this encounter, even just listening to the comm. if we call through, what happens to our cover then?'

'I never thought you cared,' I said, bitterly.

Over the military veneer, the profiteer reared his head and grinned, bright and bold. 'No chance of coming out of this on top if we lose our bluff now, is there?'

'Lay the guns,' Fran said.

Reluctant, I lifted the comm.

'Gun crew. Belay previous range. This is not an exercise. Target is Rozarrian Mercuriot Fighter Class, range one point five kilometers and holding, bearing,' I glanced at Fran's display, 'zero seven three relative and holding—'

A blast rocked the Maenad. Our pitiful paling flared white with the recoil. When the brilliance cleared, I saw Balthier's hand snaking back into his own space, leaving the whiteness of his fingerprints fading on Fran's dark arm.

When the recoil cleared, we stared at the spiralling deconstruction of an airship, particles flying off in red-glowing arcs, the rising smoke, the slow descent. The Mercuriot fell, helpless.

'Gijuk! I hadn't given the command, you bloody liz—!'

'It wasn't Gijuk,' Fran interrupted. 'Nor Ba'gamnan in the hold.'

'Because the screens are still up,' Balthier added. 'We didn't hear them descend, did we?'

They broke their gaze to peer at me, suspicious.

For an endless moment, the Mercuriot's wreckage looked to hold no survivors. Only a Fighter Class, no jettison pod detached itself—only a lone parachute, which popped into the sky almost too late for salvation.

Balthier stared at the drifting silk and shook his head.

I leaned forward. 'If it wasn't us—'

'There's another airship out there,' Fran agreed.

'They've got to be Archadian,' Baltheir said.

'Keep the guns ready,' I snapped into the comm.

Ba'gamnan nearly howled. 'They've been ready for the last hour—'

'Guns ready, screens up, the Rozarrian ship is down!'

My snarl shocked Ba'gamnan into a sadly brief silence. 'Oi! Not by our call.'

'Exactly why you're keeping the guns at the ready.'

Via the comm., Ba'gamnan laughed, tinny and starched.

* * *

Ten minutes we waited, knowing ourselves under observation.

In that ten minutes, Nono adjusted the engine for full operation. If fate decreed we go down, at least we could get there fast. The gun crew sweated it out, skin and scales, in that suddenly claustrophobic hold with one lonely port window showing them nothing. Balthier cracked his knuckles and rubbed his mouth, and burned energy with twitching. Fran held still as sculpture, but for creaking her leathers as she breathed, slow and deep.

Eventually, Balthier spoke. 'We can't stay here. Total silence in the presence of a supposed ally is likely more suspicious than skirting jagd.'

'Maybe they just went away?' I suggested. 'We're flying Archadian, they could have thought us running supplies.'

'Running them from and to where, at this bearing?' Balthier said, irritated.

'Well, why was a Rozarrian airship in at here?'

'They're out there,' Balthier said. 'The same instinct that told me we weren't alone to begin with.'

The gall to quote instinct at me, as though I had reason to trust in untried instincts without proof.

He grinned at my expression. 'Aggravating your ulcer aside, Feathers, we do have a contract to keep and profits to reap, and we're not doing either while holding.'

The inky brushstroke of smoke yet marked the Rozarrian airship's downward trend. Nothing else glimmered in that dangerously serene sky.

The Maenad moved ahead. Fran eased into her chair, Balthier's fidgets focused into the console. We coasted, slow and steady, this time avoiding the jagd cloud and any suggestion that we might be doing anything even remotely untrustworthy.

In that slow, steady silence, Fran drew a white scarf from below her console, and bound her ears to her skull. I bit my tongue to bide the urge to ask, but then the answer came to me regardless. Fran could not risk a sighting. Women were rare enough in the Archadian military, and Viera not allowed, even aboard a scavenged cargo ship crewed by northern region provincials.

Fran's fingers were deft at tucking the scarf into place. 'There they are, coming to port.'

'Archadian,' Balthier noted. 'And alone.'

His tone came out odd, almost anticipatory, eager. Fran, too, picked up that strident vibe, and turned to regard him.

'Listen, Balthier, you're not thinking of—'

'The Archadian is too fast,' Fran said, steady. 'Her guns yet primed from last volley. We haven't a chance, if we menace now. They will broadcast our identity, and our opportunity here would be void.'

'—firing on it, are you?'

The hesitation before Balthier responded told us truer than words. 'Of course not.'

The Archadian ship hailed us with good cheer, comm. crackling. 'Ho, the antiquity! Are you hit?'

We three stared at the comm., uncertain.

'What are we again?' Balthier asked. 'Midland provinces, this ship's make?'

'Northern.'

'Just testing you.'

He took the comm. Adjusting the set of his jaw, his shape of his lips as he formed the words, Balthier drawled an easy northern slang.

'Got a mite hairy there, captain, but we're grand so now.'

A crackle, then a loud laugh. 'Is that good or bad?'

'Ey?'

'Truly, m'lad! What century is that airship from? The lads here and oneself have somewhat of a pool on the date!'

Balthier drew the comm. away from his mouth. 'Oh, the bastard.'

Unable to help the grin, the sheer tired relief, I let my head fall against the back of Balthier's chair and laughed.

The Archadian Cruiser Class Kragen altered its position, coasting first alongside us, then to the fore. Her captain flaunted her, ensuring that our hold crew won a good long look at the airship's sleek fa�ade. The Kragen then took a position that would have made her vulnerable to any guns on the Maenad's gun deck—had we not been so obviously unarmed, with Gijuk and the missile launcher yet under camouflage.

Balthier continued his exchange with the Kragen's good-humoured captain. The jocularity forced a certain softening of Balthier's smile, but moment by moment, I could pick how brittle Balthier grew. It was another relief when the Kragen's captain signed off:

'Glad to have been of service, Maenad. Placid skies to yourselves—and best of luck holding that thing together!'

With a thunderclap of disrupted air, the Kragen disappeared into the skies to our aft.

After a long moment, Balthier said, 'Thank the gods for idiot upper class sons. And I sincerely hope that that's enough exercise for you, Feathers. My heart rate's certainly elevated.'

'Exercise,' I said, disgusted. 'Who has time for exercises when surrounded by emergencies?'

'Keeps life interesting,' Balthier said, laconic. 'And rather keeps one at one's best, even if it is on one's toesies, I do say.'

We had yet to test-fire the guns.


	8. What Possibilities Serve

'What the hell do you call that?'

I looked down at the tray. 'Breakfast.'

'Optimistic of you.' Balthier regarded the rough bread, green-specked cheese and grey preserved sausage that I was offering. He rose, shying from contact with the substance when I moved the plate menacingly in his direction, then disappeared from cockpit into the kitchen.

Fran caught my eye and shrugged. Without other amusement, I followed Balthier in time to see Rikken beating rapid retreat from the stove, his hands raised as though warding off an attack.

'—came out from a blockaded town, they're starving there. What gourmet shite did you expect me to cobble?'

'Can't do much about the composite elements,' Balthier replied, patient. 'But even you can do something about the presentation.'

With performative aplomb, Balthier toasted the bread, fried the pre-boiled sausage with ancient fennel seeds scavenged from a drawer, and topped the lot with melted cheese. It certainly approximated palatable food, grease-slicked to ease the aged substance going down.

'Nearly tolerable,' I told Balthier around a mouthful, as we left Rikken ruing the re-dirtied dishes. 'Like you.'

Balthier looked smug. 'Convincing presentation is nine tenths of belief.'

'Bluff is nine tenths of winning a war?'

'Or running a blockade, at least.'

We entered the cockpit, Fran in process of binding her ears flat. Balthier bowed as he delivered his navigator her fry-up, grinning at her disdain.

The Maenad demanded our attention with a buzz: we entered Archadian airspace, chewing on Balthier's providence.

The Archadian blockade deployed in stratum. Cargo ships flew in a lower strata of sky, Carriers high and in a holding pattern. Fighter Class airships cycled through the mid-range, on set patrol routes before returning to their slower-flying Carriers. Fighters typically held a small or solo crew. The occasional Cruiser Class airships, also flying through the mid-range, offered us the greatest threat. With their armaments and impressive defensive capacity, Cruisers held a crew ranging from fifty to two hundred.

We dropped into the requisite flight path for an Archadian cargo ship. According to Margrace's appropriated patrol pattern, it would be forty minutes before the first patrolling Fighter Class broached our horizon.

Which she did, on schedule. Deviating not at all, her pilot paid us no attention.

Balthier watched the passing Valfarre, an odd eagerness in his gaze, daring. An image occurred to me, of him as a child, not so long ago as it were, on the brink of a precipice, looking to leap.

We were not so lucky with the second Fighter.

Watching the Fighter perform the third sweep over the Maenad, Balthier's daring evolved a smirk, a radiant supremacy of the kind I had only ever noted in Archadians. The nearer to engagement, the less neutral, the less logically-motivated-profiteer Balthier seemed.

'Shall we dance?' Balthier asked the Valfarre. The Fighter dipped and circled the Maenad's bulk, fleet, and he laughed.

Fran turned on him, quizzical.

Balthier's need to dare the gods would not compromise our slight chance of leaving this warzone with honour, and alive. I intruded my palm between their locked gazes.

'Or, you could abide by the stratagems agreed on previously.'

Balthier's smirk morphed to a pout.

Fran took advantage of his distraction to speak. 'A breach of contract, to initiate aggressions in a circumstance where we risk losing our cover.'

'No shooting at scouts who take us as face value,' he ceded, sighing.

The Valfarre performed a double-sweep again. The pilot in this Fighter Class, unlike the other, had a carefulness likely to get him out of this war alive: despite our apparent lack of weaponry and our apparent allegiance, he never approached on a tangent that would have made him vulnerable.

The first Valfarre had made clear that double-sweeping cargo ships was not procedure. Did this careful pilot suspect something was wrong, or was he another admirer of the classic airship form?

Fran thought along similar lines. 'The screens are deployed, correct?'

I lifted the comm. 'The screens are deployed, aren't they?'

Ba'gamnan confirmed with an irritated snarl. 'We're like sitting ducks, while the bloody Archade's getting his gander at us through the port window.'

At that, Balthier's expression changed, the glance he shared with Fran bored and resigned.

'Oh no. He'll do another sweep, Feathers. Tell the below-decks to smile and wave.'

'To do what?'

'We're in a blockade where the most interesting thing happening is the occasional rainstorm. We're on the Archadian's side, even if we are mere provincial allies. Add boredom and alliance together, and we should be glad to see him. Even the below-decks lizards.'

I stared at Balthier, mystified, while the elongated Valfarre silhouette returned.

'The pilot wants his tribute,' Balthier added.

'Gun deck, hold crew. Are you listening?'

'We can shoot him now?' Ba'gamnan asked, hopeful.

'No,' I said, 'but you do get to show your teeth. Give the pilot a smile and a wave on his next sweep.'

'Ye what?'

'Pretend he's bringing your wage, Ba'gamnan. Your smile is our salvation.'

'I bet ye say that to all yer jimmies,' Ba'gamnan retorted. 'Mob of philanderers, these cockpit snobs.'

The third sweep terminated with the Valfarre slowing to a show, awarding us in the cockpit a brief visual of a pilot, navigator, two main crew raising fists in the Archadian salute. Teeth bared in nothing remotely resembling a smile, Balthier saluted in return, while the open comm. to the hold deck let us hear Ba'gamnan's litany as the Valfarre continued its slow, rolling viewing along the hold window.

'If'n ye get any closer, bastards, I'd put my fist right through your hull and bugger the guns—'

These were the events to make fervent patriots of us all. I pressed my sleeve to my brow.

'That a customary behaviour, Balthier?'

Balthier snorted, disgusted. 'Amongst the children and certain types who think war is worth congratulations. Pass me your plates, will you? I'll take them to the kitchen before the remnants evolve. Fran, set course to the Vilshevnik purvama cluster. And you,' a long finger targeted me, 'not a word questioning why. You're to start trusting me someday. Start now.'

I held out my hands, appeasing.

* * *

The Vilshevnik purvama cluster was not, as I had wondered, a code between the skypirates for abandoning the war effort and taking off to a holiday retreat.

Known collectively as the Floating Lands, purvama littered the skies between Balfonheim and Bhujerba, performing a slow dance on unknown tides. The size of purvama ranged from rubble to the continent of Dorstonis, on which the skycity Bhujerba was built.

Speculation suggested the rock floated due to a high concentration of magicite, not least of which was the variety developed as skystone, mined from within Bhujerba itself.

Vilshevnik looked to be a decayed purvama, the rocky rubble that occurred when a larger purvama crumbled, worn by air and rain, but the Maenad's approach brought unexpected life to the rubble.

Serpents crawled, in such numbers I felt nauseated, dipping in and out of the grassy, feathered stone.

'Can I ask now?'

'No,' Balthier said, cheerful enough. 'You can help us with our kits, though.'

'Are you being purposefully obtuse?'

'Good things come to those who wait.'

'I'll take that as a yes, then. Are you purposefully being difficult?'

'It comes naturally to some.' With a quick grin, Balthier disappeared to the hold. After stabilising the ship, Fran followed without a word.

I waited for a good minute, teeth grinding, then leapt to follow.

By the time I arrived, Balthier had the hold hatch open and a ladder lowered, giving curt instruction to Ba'gamnan and Rikken, the pair equipped to accompany him. Balthier wore a sword and carried pouches full of incendiaries, but no gun, slinging down the rope ladder with ease.

Fran handed me a pouch of the same, and gestured me down the ladder. 'I'll come last.'

Thinking of those serpents, I grabbed a stave before I went. Balthier cleared a small space on the crawling island with his incendiaries, and now held a shuttered lantern high, the light defining the limits of his circle. Quick enough with his sword, the serpents got wise, and stayed relatively clear.

Ba'gamnan and Rikken were next, then Fran. By then, our ship-shadowed dusk seemed defined by glittering red eyes and reptilian smells.

Balthier began a march, purposeful. Fran's quick motion from rock to rock, almost an outskirt scout, showed she knew her footing in this strange non-place even better than he did.

'Alright, Balthier, what are we doing here—?'

Balthier cut me off with style due the leading man he claimed to be—he uncoiled, and severed the head from a serpent poised to strike at my distraction.

I clutched my stave close.

In the steppe surrounding Balfonheim, serpents were common and aggressive, as tall as men when they reared to attack, waiting in ambush in the grass. These serpents were nothing of the sort, grey, shiny and slick, with odd protuberances instead of eyes. The very look of them suggested wrongness, lethality, something warning me not to touch.

The scornful often said proximity to magicite mutated healthy life. I imagined these serpents, trapped for generations on an island laced with magicite, and shuddered.

Balthier kicked the grey-scaled body off the rock. 'As much as I adore infuriating you, Feathers, you really do need to keep your mind on your task. We're here for supper.'

Another fragment of the original purvama drifted close by, overhead, oppressing.

'On a maggot infested rock?'

'Balthier—!' Fran's shout turned his head, too slow.

Her knife was quicker, drawn from the boot and devouring distance, disappearing into the shadowed underside of the overhead rock. A coiled snake tumbled into the void.

Balthier blinked, eyebrows raised. Fran crossed the distance with a leap. Never quite touching him, she gave the impression of having shaken him for his inattention, the shape of the space between them crackling with her intensity.

Balthier shrugged his apology. 'Where better to keep foodstores than on a purvama that everyone thinks infested with parasites?'

We fought our way onwards. Surprisingly, the gaps in the island took me harder than the snakes did; I paled, sweating, watching as the others leaped from one shattered rock to the next, the fall of a thousand fathoms between them and honest ground.

Balthier's end destination proved to be a larger rock formation, drifting within an obscuring rubble cloud, fine as dust. The rock's core had been hollowed out on a gradual slope, and sealed with a barrier spell. Fran spoke the word to clear the air from the spell.

'Supper,' Fran announced, oblique.

With a flourish, Balthier kicked open one of the chests, revealing can after can of varied providence, glittering in the lantern's light.

The manufactured cave housed a pirate's treasure trove of lunches, locked into stacked chests. In the presence of surplus, my long-repressed hunger returned energetically. This would supply the Maenad for weeks. We could eat our fill and more.

From the shining morass, Balthier withdrew a bottle, uncorked it with his teeth, and drank a solid swig. Even from this distance, I could smell the rising sweet mahdu.

Rikken exhaled heavily, suddenly slump-shouldered with relief. Even Ba'gamnan cackled. 'Thought ye were mad, pirate.'

Balthier corked the bottle and tossed it to the Bangaa. 'Maybe. Doesn't mean I have to be stupid, does it?'

Ba'gamnan poured a substantial quantity of the addictive, mildly hallucinogenic brandy down his throat. 'I do so love a bout of the bracing herb.'

I nodded at the rest of the chests. 'What's in them?'

Fran shrugged, one shouldered. 'I'm not a shopkeeper.'

'It rather makes the suppers exciting,' Balthier added. 'Pick and mix.'

'So which ones do we bring back to the ship?'

Balthier blinked at me, then at Fran, mystified. 'All of them.'  
It was full dark by the time we were done. We hovered in the fluorescent glow of the hold, with an excitement akin to celebration. Balthier leaned back and basked in the atmosphere, watching as the exultant Bangaa cohort uncovered food supplies suiting even their distinct palate.

On discovery of the constituents of a hearty curry, Rikken made the comment, registered only in the chuckles of listening Bangaa: 'Never say that mad bastards don't take care of their crew.'

With one offering, Balthier had taken them one step further away from mutiny, one step further into his debt, and made clear to me how readily the skypirate duo could renege on their bargain with Margrace.

They knew their skies. Who could guess their motivations?

* * *

Our first target was a Light Cruiser Class.

With weaker armour and lighter weaponry than a standard Cruiser, the Lights were still cause for concern, speedy as they were. Balthier and Fran laid out their plan, concocted over the kitchen bench. They did not intend to let the Archadians know we were there.

The Cruiser was due to pass overhead, on its standard patrol route. We moved before it arrived, into the dark side of a sky turning from day to night. When the Cruiser appeared, it would be a silhouette against the lighter side of the horizon.

With skill, Balthier manoeuvred the Maenad into another floating cluster of debris.

Then the Maenad went dark.

From the perspective of the approaching Cruiser, the Maenad was another unassuming blot on the horizon, another drifting lump of rock. Their screens would tell the same, that there was no intense concentration of Mist in use, only the residual glimmer of the substance making the purvamas float.

We waited, primed, as the Cruiser drifted closer. I admired it, if more out of habit than intent. The Archadians made beautiful airships, function and form related solely through the whimsy of the designer.

Over one hundred and fifty crew would man a ship that size. The question of survivors who could identify the Maenad would be moot, with the precautions to keep our appearance concealed.

The survivors of our strike would have as much chance as any who flew to war, drifting to the uncertain ocean below.

The tension was tangible. At Balthier's nod, I tapped through to the gun deck and the hold.

I felt a ridiculous pride when, strangely thoughtful, Ba'gamnan confirmed their readiness before my prompt. Gijuk above confirmed my reading on our unsuspecting target, yet ghosted on a steadily converging course. Our miscellaneous crew: deposited unexpectedly, intractable and with goals in a hundred myriad directions. What a miracle, to see them work now, efficient as only those with a unified target can be.

'Raise screens.'

The Maenad shuddered in obedience.

By the time the Cruiser was within range, I had envisaged the process of fire and destruction so well that I had stopped thinking of it as a ship, beautiful or not.

For the first time since we had left Balfonheim, our uncertain crew would be able to actually test fire.

Tomorrow, we would have slipped back into our role as a cargo ship. Around us, the Archadian forces would be flying blind, searching for the invisible Rozarrian battleship that had taken out one of their Cruisers.

—if our bluff held. If Fran could keep her poker face while we were boarded; if Balthier could keep his charming Archadian smile and talk the suspicious away from us.

If the Maenad's insufficient hull stayed sound against the recoil from the missile launcher.

Mellifluous, Balthier said, 'I think now's a good time, Feathers.'

I stifled my misgivings and raised the comm. 'Gun deck, open fire.'

The roar was immense.

I clutched at my chair's arm and tightly. We skated, as though on water instead of sky, so powerful was the recoil. The Maenad near twisted itself double. The Cruiser's shields had been in flight mode, not fight: too low to resist our missile ripping deep into her hull, lighting the sky.

But that light was all I saw. The Maenad keeled sharply to the side, rivets popping free of twisted seams with a rattling percussion. I could hear something fragmenting, shattering—the wall-mounted mirror in the bathroom, I later found out. The roar of a burst steam pipe added to the cacophony.

We didn't need the comm. to hear Gijuk's roar from above, or Ba'gamnan's answer from below, 'Yearrrgh!'

The follow-up missile left the Maenad, and ravaged our target on cue, the assault guns in the hold punching through the Cruiser's hull, glass, and destroying the glossair rings.

In the aftermath of the recoil, Fran's ears were almost flat against her skull. Her eyes were wide. Balthier wore that crooked, manic grin that made him look younger than he was. He patted the console, pleased.

'I told you she'd hold it together for us,' he said. 'What do those engineers know, anyway?'

* * *

Fran confirmed the dying Cruiser had issued no last minute identification of the Maenad.

'What's your estimate on their fall, Fran?' After his enthusiasm, Balthier's return to crisp businesslike tones made my skin crawl.

'Seventeen minutes.'

'Give or take a minute,' Balthier said, satisfied. How many dying ships had they seen, to be able to estimate how long a fall on a faltering ring could take? 'Will you go?'

Fran looked at him, unbuckling. The smile they shared was not especially pleasant. 'Will you wait?'

'For you, always.'

Balthier brought us around on the crippled ship. The assault guns shattered the outer ring, while the inner's wavering spin could do nothing more than slow the ship's descent, barely enough to allow the surviving crew to abandon ship.

This was the dangerous part of the operation. Prepared, I wore my Rozarrian uniform already, following when Fran collected me with a lift of her chin. We descended into the hold, looking up once when Balthier shouted, 'Call it fifteen minutes to be safe, Feathers. Don't let Fran stand me up!'

Fran wore the armband and sparing armour of a Rozarrian death-strike squadron, the only regiment native to Rozarria that permitted non-Hume combatants. The Bangaa contingent waited below, wearing similar gear, while Rikken dressed in pristine red to match my own. In brief sentences, taking no more than fifteen seconds, I reminded our boarding party of the lay of the dying Cruiser and their designations.

Rikken carried other uniforms. That was expected. The empty sacks hanging across the shoulders of the Bangaa sibs were not.

I adjusted my breastplate and disapproved vocally, even as Rikken and Fran wound the grapnels ready.

Ba'gamnan grinned. 'No shopping list of yer own, wee birdie? If'n Mist cores were no so unstable, we'd recoup the whole lot of this sorry affair with one ship. As it is, we'll make our wage with what we collect, just like yon mad skypirate promised.'

'Don't forget his percentage.'

'O'course. He's gonna get us out of this mess. Deserves a tot for that, and for the opportunity.' A glitter struck light in that beady eye. 'Ye've no mind to collect yer officer's wage?'

'I'm in for maps,' I snapped. 'Codes. Flight patterns.'

The Bangaa flared his nostrils, then lost interest as the grapnels fired.

Balthier kept the Maenad steady, hold aligned in descent with the dying ship. Crossing was a flirtation with exposure, swinging across the dark void. On landing, the stink of ozone and cordite and Mist, like an attack of sulphur to the nose, was painful.

Fran staggered on landing and gasped, hands cupped around her mouth and nose.

The Bangaa contingent scarce gave her a look before disappearing into the hulk of the ship. Returning sounds of conflict indicated the crew not entirely dead or departed. Shouting for either face-to-deck surrender as they raided, or the alternative of a mortal ending, Ba'gamnan and his sibs went to work, leaving firm memories in the frightened survivors of a Rozarrian death-or-die squad raiding from an invisible airship.

Only Rikken hesitated, eyes on Fran. 'You want—'

'Get away, I've got her back. You've a job to do, mercenary.'

He sprinted off in Ba'gamnan's wake.

'Fran?'

She swayed, stance crossing. 'The Mist. The skystone is unstable. It—wants to expand—'

Expanding meant explosion. 'All the more reason to get in and out in ten minutes or less.'

With the unusual grace of the tall and fit, Fran led the way to command offices. I trailed, watching to the rear. We were interrupted twice, coming on to soldiers through a billow of Mist and around a sharp corner. The first time, Fran took the lone soldier down barehanded before I could draw my gun, with a painful, terrifying quiet. I left my gun out after that, readied, but the second time Fran killed the man before I could even lift to aim.

Apart from the two interruptions, HQ was too quiet. My skin crawled with misgiving.

Mist uncoiled from the damaged core, thicker as moments passed. In the manner of Mist, time and physicality warped. Shadows of ourselves ran ahead and beside us, the actions of these spectres half a second ahead of our own motions. I watched my own head turning to one side in advance of my own turn, nevertheless helpless to do anything but follow the motion through. An exercise in pained futility.

We thundered through the mapping room, the captain's quarters, the mate's laydown bay. Apart from scattered remains and sign of disruption, there were no maps, no logbooks, no people.

Until the Mist was suddenly full of them: shadows, memories, clustered in the corridor, then disappearing up a ladder. Fran stopped, breathing through her mouth, eyes wide.

'They've barricaded themselves in the cockpit and beyond.' She pointed up.

'In the cockpit loft? We can't get up there.' The ladder had been withdrawn, the lift disabled.

Fran's Mist-shadow crouched a moment before she did. She leapt higher than I could have and grabbed the ledge beneath the door. Perched, one leg stretched along that narrow ledge while the other coiled beneath herself, she lowered one arm. I holstered my gun and jumped as high as I could. From a single grip on my wrist, Fran drew me up beside her.

Her nails cut into my wrists, stinging. I presented the evidence with a frown. 'I've known other Viera. They tend to file back the talons, to be civilised.'

For the first time since we had swung across, Fran smiled. She fanned her fingers at me, well-shaped nails gleaming. 'Skypirates indulge both decadence and uncivility.'

On that narrow ledge, scarcely one foot wide, we flanked the portal, guns readied. Fran pulled out one of Balthier's handy blends and tapped a powder into the door's lock and about the seals. She detonated the dust with a word.

The cockpit bore the brunt of the Maenad's initial blast. We faced a jumble of shattered hatch boards, unseated ventilators, the charred bodies of the pilot, navigator, and two senior officers.

Apart from the corpses, the cockpit was empty.

'They have to be somewhere.'

Fran's nostrils flared. Eyes wide and through the Mist, she appeared for one moment like a child, too innocent for the things she'd seen. The next moment she was a furred, wild-maned hunter, using an animal's instincts against the Humes, uncanny and alien.

Framed by the trickle of steamy discharge from the shattered console, Fran pointed. 'There.'

She ran. I sprinted in the wake of her shout. The starboard corridor curved hard with the shape of the hull, giving us dangerous blind curves instead of corners. Fran had her stance set and gun aimed unwavering at the surviving Archadian officers.

There were five officers and one Judge, motionless against the starboard window. They were kitted fully with parachutes or float-stones, damaged and bleeding and smoke-stained as they were, the memstones holding maps and patrol patterns clutched to chest.

There was something odd about their resignation. Why was the glass still whole? Why had they not leaped while the chance remained to them?

The Judge spoke, his lip curling. 'An underhand tactic like that, of course it had to be Rozarrians.'

I shrugged. 'Just hand the memstone over, gents, and we'll leave you to jettison.'

'That's the best offer they've got, I suspect,' said the Judge. 'Well fought, lads. See you on the other side, and give my best to your mothers.'

A rush of wrongness paralysed me, just for a moment.

Ambush. The sound of footsteps rattling in approach, from behind us. A squad told to hide, to wait until we were pinned between the memstone treasure and our lack of escape. The bastard Judge had made the soldiers wait, tempting death in the airship's downing, just to lure us. To take as many of us down as he could.

Judge, jury and executioner. Let not the lives of incidentals stand in the way of Archadia's special forces.

Before I could move, the Judge slammed his plated arm through the starboard window. The glass shattered into pebbles. Desperately, the Archadian ordinary officers lunged for the escape, as I fired, blind into that motion. Only the Judge stayed to return fire, roaring, even as the bodies of his comrades and their precious memstones fell to the glass-covered deck.

Fran's hand closed on my neck, dragging me to reason. The corridor's hard bend saved us, and our hasty retreat. The ricochets fell silent, even as the approaching squad closed in behind us.

Peering around the curve, I saw the Judge had not moved, grinning. He lobbed something slow and careful directly at us, then took a calm step to that open window.

My shot caught the bastard him the throat. Only then did I see what he'd thrown our way.

The skystone core, mazed and throbbing.

The Mist boiled, and Fran went berserk.

* * *

It always astounded me, how quickly fights began, how quickly they ended.

Six years I had kept my cover intact in Draklor. Eight days I had crawled through the ducts of that place, escaping the search. Less than three minutes to disable the guards that protested my theft of my escape vehicle.

Ten minutes to find the memstone, execute a Judge, for a Viera to single-handedly destroy fifteen armoured soldiers barring our retreat to the Maenad. Two minutes to return to the Cruiser's hold, so close to Balthier's final countdown, and swing across the void again.

Seventeen minutes from start of boarding until the end.

Clutching the bastard memstone to my breastplate, I couldn't stop retching, the egg-stink of Mist yet thick in my throat. Leaning against the Maenad's sidestrut, Fran looked sallow beneath her colour, bruised raw on the cheek and jaw, where I'd struck her with my gun, trying to shock her to sanity. Ba'gamnan and his sibs had returned before us, sacks well-hung; Rikken was safe too, his burden deployed.

'—on, come on, are they back? Fran! I'm blind up here, I need to pull away— Fran!'

I could scarcely lift the comm., much less speak into it. Rikken tapped through and told Balthier he could shove off. The hatch yet open, we watched the distance increase as the Maenad peeled away from the Cruiser's last arc.

A ship full of boiling Mist hit water. The explosion lifted us away, the drowning fireball highlighting the night in shades of smoulder.

Minutes later, the Maenad returned to her lower strata, slow and steady as any innocuous supply ship, hatch closed and screens lowered.

Amidst the sound of loot being poured to the deck—silver, steel, weapons and fancy clothes, ammunition galore—I sank to my knees and watched, helpless, as Fran's fingers slipped from the strut.

She fell.

I thought I was still seeing, feeling things in Mist-sight, those half-seconds before circumstance: Balthier must have been half-way across the hold, to have caught her as he did.

'What happened?'

Pulling herself together, a display of pained independence if ever I had seen one, Fran pushed him away and came to her knees. Hair dragged across her eyes. What would she have made of the expression on Balthier's face right then, if she'd seen. He held out his hands for her a moment longer, dropping in the face of her disregard.

The pragmatic facade returned. 'Do you need healing?'

'Too much Mist aboard that ship,' Fran said, stiff. 'I would not have more running through me.'

'I've herbals—'

Fran met his eyes then, a smile flickering to life. 'I'm not smoking your spliff, Balthier, not for bruises.'

His mouth pinched, frustrated at the continual rejections. I marvelled at the dynamic. Who did he think he was, to feel such responsibility for Fran?

'I'm not letting you board the next one alone.'

'She wasn't alone,' I retorted, from where I had come to sprawl, sapped of adrenaline and graceless.

Balthier ignored me.

Fran shook her head, winced, and levered herself to standing. 'Who would be capable of holding the Maenad to the trajectory of a falling ship to let us board and disembark so readily, if not you?'

Fran rejected Balthier's offer of assistance, too, by affecting not to see it. As she walked across the hold, Balthier threw up his hands entirely.

'Thank you,' Fran said, close. I startled to realise she addressed me.

That, more than anything, had me lurch to my feet.

'I would have been lost.' Fran held out her hand.

I took it.

At the feel of those now-ragged nails across my knuckles, I swallowed the rising gorge. I tried not to scour her form for traces of the bloodsplatter, the gore, shed when the Mist had driven her beyond restraint and into the arms of unsuspecting soldiers. I could smell it, blood and Mist, Mist and blood. I imagined it soaked into the memstone with its precious schedules, into my hair, into Fran's skin. My blow to her face had been less altruistically intended than it seemed.

In a parody of graciousness, I inclined my head over our clasped hands, while Balthier looked between us. Despite his disbelief, evidently he had decided I fobbed off an enemy to spare Fran. 'Time for a celebratory drink?'

I caught a trace of pain in Fran's eyes, and a warning.

There was a reason that Viera, with their sensitivity to Mist, so rarely took roles on airships. But Balthier did not know it, that warning told me, and Fran did not plan to enlighten him.

I licked my lips. 'Who's holding our course steady?'

Comradely, Balthier shook me on the shoulder, mercurial moods faster than a sane one could follow. Then he flung himself towards the ladder, eager. 'Guess I'll have do it, if you insist on it. Pour for me and come up, will you?'

'Do I look like your slave, Archadian?'

He ducked below the shaft to deliver a final smile. 'My slaves smile more, Feathers.'

By then Ba'gamnan had taken Balthier's invitation to heart, and had drawn a bottle of looted wine from his pile, while Rikken rummaged amongst the crates for appropriate receptacles.

We crowded into the tiny cockpit, finding space on a deck where popped rivets skittered, and drank a toast to success.

* * *

If boarding, looting, fighting and deliverance could be over in less than seventeen minutes, how could a hangover last for six and a half weeks?

For six and a half weeks, we went on, rising adrenaline and lounging boredom. Nono and Raz spent the day after every attack welding popped rivets, until the reality of an airship shaking itself apart became normality.

Our success had been such that our endeavour would have to come to a tragic end, sooner or later. Pride cast before the gods, as it were—except as the weeks stretched on, sooner became much later.

Balthier had a knack with banter, with his Archadian slang and his northern dialect. Every contact with the enemy forces came verbally, until it seemed more than luck that we had ye to be boarded. At night, we exploited Fran's knowledge of the skies, the purvamas, of every opportunity for a stealth attack. I started to believe that Balthier could hide the Maenad in clouds of ego, if it came to that.

With each triumphant encounter, the self-perpetuated legend of our survival fed on itself, as fat as the Bangaa loot pile was large.

We killed a lot, yet only looted those ships whose communications frequencies were disabled in the strike. For the others, we fired until the ship went down. There were sufficient encounters of the former to stay abreast of the changing Archadian flight patterns. As our reputation grew, Archadian intelligence changed their encryption more than once. Our minds together, Balthier and I cracked every code within the hour of receipt.

It was a dirty way to commit war, had we been committing war.

Wars were patriotic. Not-for-profit—or at least, not for the profit of those who fought in it. The Maenad's crew let their hearts swell with whatever filled the gaps where loyalty and honour should have been. Belief in their captain's infallibility grew, as did the lootpile.

Yet the Archadians were increasingly wary. New ships entered the battlefield, in large numbers, and as a cargo ship, as a supply ship, it was bound to happen that an Archadian destroyer would one day ask us for supplies.


	9. Your Money Or Your Morals

The harbinger of our downfall came in the form of a rakish silhouette, flying where a destroyer should not have been.

Fran kept her eyes on the display, which moderated the deadly menace of the incoming airship into a blip. Balthier and I stared at the lethal visual instead. The distance between the airship and the Maenad decreased rapidly, doing little to ease my tension, or the stiff set of Balthier's shoulders.

'I think they've been looking for us,' Balthier said.

'Very well done, captain. Shall I lay the guns?'

Fran tapped Balthier's console. 'We have no time. They're signaling. Open comms.'

The beauty of the day made a travesty of the Cruiser's killing intent.

If the Cruiser knew the subject of their frustrated searching was in their sights, they gave no sign, these communications simply as expected for a destroyer requiring cargo. Glibly, Balthier extended his glamour through the first round of dialogue, but there would be small chance of a long-term deception if they boarded.

I had last seen this make of Cruiser Class in development two years prior as a set of well marked-up blueprints, deep in Draklor's laboratory. Swift, multi gunned and well armoured, the destroyer had likely been drafted fresh out of manufacture, specifically to seek and destroy the phantom Rozarrian battleship plaguing Archadian air.

However, freshly drafted and innovative design notwithstanding, the Cruiser's pilot and navigator were not savvy as to the ways of war. The airship approached from an angle that rendered its gun deck impotent, unable to strike back if we should strike first. Yet the shields on a ship like this would well compensate for the incompetance, resisting our first strike, and we would not be able to release a barrage rapidly enough to induce failure. An enemy contact signal would be transmitted to the Archadian fleet, along with a description of exactly what and who we were.

We did not make threaten. The airship continued on a trajectory so painfully vulnerable.

It tempted us, and I wondered: surely no pilot was so thick. It had to be deliberately. The Cruiser's captain might not have known who we were, but he might well suspect.

As instructed, the Maenad held steady, immobile. On board, we leapt into action, even as the Cruiser latched onto our hull with a shuddering, grating deployment of grapnels.

From his personal stores, Balthier had provided Rikken and myself with enough parts of an Archadian uniform that we could pass at first glance. I descended the ladder to the hold, dressing as I went. Already clad, Rikken stood at the hold hatch, cracking his neck from side to side in readiness.

Nono retreated to the engine deck and hid. Archadians were willing to tolerate Bangaa grunt aboard a cargo ship, but Moogle skill and expertise was another matter entirely.

I assumed position at Rikken's side.

The skypirates' strategy depended the exploitation of one moment of uncertainty. Expecting to cross into a cargo ship, the Archadian boarding party would sight a superficially Archadian-allied crew. From a distance, the Maenad's hold, full of crated ammunition and supplies, looked like a typical cargo hold, despite the bedding stowed here and there. They would be sufficiently lulled into board us without their weapons at the ready.

Once on board the Maenad, the conversions to the Maenad's hull would be noticeable, the screens evident for what they were, not to mention the assault guns: Ba'gamnan paced between the four, checking their readiness before bending his back with the other Bangaa, camouflaging the guns with sacking and crates.

I reached for the comm. mounted next to the hatch, and tapped through to Gijuk on the missile launcher up above.

'One round loaded,' he confirmed. 'At this range, I can drop screens and fire whenever yer ready.'

The hold's strip window gave us prime view of the approaching Cruiser. Accustomed to Fighters sweeping us, in instance of polite tribute, Ba'gamnan, Bwagi and Rinok waved hello at our unwanted guests as the Cruiser's own windows passed ours.

I stopped Ba'gamnan in his tasks, his warm scale rasping against my gauntlet. 'This is it, Bangaa. One thing goes wrong, that bastard will be off like a vorpal bunny, and we'll not have a chance to make it right.'

Ba'gamnan proceeded to his gun. 'It's always it, birdie. Must bide like it's always yer last day. That's the way to survive, even yon mad ponce of a captain knows that.'

As if in response, Balthier swung down the ladder. The sound of his landing startled me into looking. And gawping.

The Maenad's make and model of ship came from the far northern region of Archadia. Ruing the lack of our foresight in not acquiring full Archadian uniforms from our many victims, Balthier had compromised: as captain and pilot, he dressed himself in the trailing excess of expensive, bright-coloured fabric native to the northern region of Archadia. He wore perfume, too, thick enough to make Ba'gamnan, Rinok and Bwagi snuffle and curse.

'What do you think, Feathers? I've been saving the provincial seraglio look for a special occasion.'

Hand sweeping to his brow, he posed.

Heart racing as though battle was already upon us, I swallowed my disbelief. Unfortunately, Fran ghosted down in Balthier's wake, and her matching costume pushed me beyond swallowing. With no easy way to conceal a Viera up close—they were too tall, too custom-shaped—Fran had dressed with Viera attributes presented obviously, gods, like the member of a northerner's seraglio.

In the darkness behind my eyes, I saw corpses. Archadian corpses, dressed in Rozarrian get-up to further our myth. Balthier and Fran's corpses amongst the lot, beribboned in blood as bright as their current wear. Mutilated bodies, my own, dressed as Archadians. Through it all, I heard the clinking, scuttling sound of Bangaa claws counting a loose and clinking pile of loot.

'You're as bad as Margrace! This is a game to you!'

Balthier was taken aback.

'Bloody hells, Balthier, we're about to engage a destroyer that could take the guts out of us before we've even started to turn to an alignment suited to fire. And you prance around in costume—don't you even care?'

He did not respond initially, until Fran stepped up to his shoulder, chiffon ghosting against chiffon.

'Care that we might die?'

I gritted my teeth. That we might die because of Balthier's fancies? 'Yes.'

'Yet we might die anywhere,' Fran said. 'For less.'

Balthier shook his head. 'That's not it, is it, Feathers? You've never trusted that I've got this far on skill. You think it's luck. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.'

'You're the only one who does,' I retorted. 'Or even why.'

'You'd prefer it if I laid down an allegiance; it's all right killing the masses as long as I'm doing it for the masses? You think we're any more likely to survive out here if we were fighting with an Empire's worth of justification behind our guns?'

My hands clawed into fists, shaking. 'There's worse things.'

'Yeah,' Balthier said, with a curl of his lip. 'I know. Worse things, like bloody politics, like defending the wrong kind of freedom. I've done that once before already, and I have no desire to do it again. Empires fight wars to protect what they've got or to claim more than they have. What do I have but this ship, and my freedom? The kind of freedom that lets me walk past a hunt board without caring if my name is up there as a mark instead of a claimant. I fight this battle to keep that freedom intact, knowing I've done right by me. I don't care about the incidental profit I pull in, about whatever promises Margrace has made me and will break, when it suits him. I fight for my pride. And I will do it in style.'

In Archadia, there had been an old saying, one fragment of a long history that militarised Archadia preferred to ignore: an average citizen would bridle if you called his ancestors dishonest, but would brag if he discovered that they were skypirates.

Briefly, I felt a glimmer of that emotion. Imagine being free enough to choose without contemplating shame as a consequence. Choosing honestly, without fear of reproach or failure. Without fear.

What had made me stay this path that Margrace set me upon, the threat of execution—or my own shame, of having failed Margrace before where I could have had no hope of success.

I sucked in air that felt too stale for what I wanted to say, crackling with gunpowder and a whiff of Mist.

'Let's get our show on,' Balthier said brightly, widespread arms taking in the closed hatch. 'The leading man requires his audience.'

* * *

Matching our open hatch, the Archadians opened their own. The boarding crew was ready and waiting, crisp Archadian armour shining in the sunlight.

Amongst the crew waiting to board were three helmeted heads—Judges. Too good for manual labour, the Judges did nothing as the crew engaged with the Maenad, grapnels and a spanning gangway at the ready.

Beside me, Balthier stopped waving. 'Their cockpit crew know what they're doing, with the positioning. They're not giving us a single vulnerable target.'

'We're not going to hold up to a close inspection, you do realise that?'

'I could dash upstairs and bring us around. Is that going to give us enough to give Gijuk his target?'

Fran shook her head. 'If the ship sees us pick up forward acceleration, their first response would be to fall back and strike first. And we do not have the speed to come around as far as we need in order to strike.'

'One step forwards, two steps back,' Balthier said, musing. 'If we can't go forwards, we can go back.'

Fran gave him a long, considering look.

The other ship's crew extended the gangway across, clattering as the hooks locked on to our deck. A Judge called across, one with his helm flared like a peacock. 'Captain! What is the name of your airship?'

Balthier bowed, florid, and cupped his hands to his mouth. 'You call us de Maenad, y'honour. What can we do yer for? Mind, we're on de return route. Might not find everything yer looking for 'ere.'

The Judge nodded, and muttered something to an aide at his side. He leaned forward to shout again. 'We have a requisition list. Your assistance in meeting our requirements would be much appreciated.'

'Feathers, how many points do you need us brought around to bring the missile launcher to bear?'

'Ten degrees,' I said, pained. 'But for the love of—if they see us moving, Balthier—listen to Fran—'

'Do it,' Fran said, smiling.

They could create such a world between them, a cocoon wrought of their continued hurts and incomparable continuance.

Moving without a slow, sashaying motion, Fran sauntered to Raz, who hung at the rail of the engine deck, watching. She cut an interesting figure, veil-like clouds of colour drawing the eye of the boarding party. Her lips barely moved as she delivered her instruction, 'for Nono', I heard, Raz's muzzle twitching in acknowledgment before he ventured into the engine's depths.

Taking advantage of the double distraction of gangway extension and Fran's swaying motion, Balthier was already at the central ladder. He paused to dangle one-armed, and hissed at me, 'Get ready to hang on to something. Morals, women, patriotism, whatever your preference.'

As the Judges in their plate mail thundered across the gangway, Balthier disappeared neatly.

The foremost Judge moved his helm from side to side, as if searching for the vision of northern captain. The search kept him from focusing on the odd shapes of floor-mounted guns, covered in sacking, and the modifications to our hull.

The other Judge eyed the hull more closely. Despite the visor obscuring his face, I could recognise puzzlement even in his shoulders. Rikken saw it too; he hissed through his teeth and nudged me with his elbow.

I saluted, brisk. 'Captain's just darted up above to change. I've been acting quartermaster, anything you need help with, y'honour—'

The foremost Judge held out a scrip of paper. 'Fill this, will you? And quickly.'

'Of course, y'honour, do you have a—'

The Judge studying our hull modification grabbed the arm of his associate. 'Hold on a minute, what's this?'

An unexpected vibration rose through the deck.

Almost in unison, the six Judges lifted their heads, like alarmed animals before the storm.

Fran had already arranged herself against the hull. Rikken closed his hand around my forearm and pulled me to the deck, just before the Maenad ran into a brick wall.

At least, that's what it felt like.

I stared out through the hatch in astonishment as we swung away from the Archadian Cruiser—in the opposite direction.

I realized what Balthier had done: Nono had swiftly adjusted the engine's rings to allow full power in reverse, for all I would have said the action impossible in a ship this old. In the cockpit, engaging hard, Balthier pulled us backwards rather than forwards, in a tight semi-circle.

Ten degrees forward to bring our missile launcher to bear—or two degrees in reverse.

The Judges staggered and cascaded, while the Bangaa cohort, having busied themselves with the appearance of work, leapt for the guns and hastily unwrapped them, keeping their balance by the merits of clawed feet shrieking against the metal deck.

The Maenad screamed, too, Mist boiling down into the hold from the engine deck. Balthier appeared at the ladder, hanging backwards, ready to leap.

The view through the open hold hatch burned a blinding white—our missile had struck their shield. We could only our ploy would hold: retaliation against the Maenad would wait until their precious Judges were no longer aboard our ship.

I blinked glare from my eyes. Fran engaged battle already, blade swinging at the peacock-headed Judge while the others shouted, staggering to their feet. Peacock put in a good fight. Ba'gamnan leapt away from his gun, roaring with glee for the opportunity to brawl, and threw himself on the back of an unwary Judge. I drew my own short sword, gasped for air and balance, and joined the affray.

Shockingly, we were hit. We had such assurance they would hold fire, with their Judges aboard us.

'Fran, the Cruiser's opened fire—'

'It's only recoil! From their shields!' Balthier staggered as he ran along the heaving deck, fast where he lost his grace. 'Gijuk's going wild up there—'

Rinok and Bwagi added the assault guns to the battle. The shields flared white, on the verge of failure, but we lacked the final piece of explosive power to induce collaps. Time was against us, every second adding to the opportunity that the Archadians would blow our cover.

From here, across the reeling distance from open hatch to hatch, I could see their shield generator.

A sudden, inexplicable rage caught me, seeing the target within such easy proximity.

At some point in the turbulence, the gangway had fallen. I ran forward, target locked. Across a gap of body lengths, I leaped.

The nightmares from that daring dive would come later.

An airship's shield, even a city's paling, were never meant to stop bodies with such a low velocity as a leaping human. I tumbled across the horrendous blue void and came upright as quickly as I could, having rolled myself straight into hell—but even in hell, I did not do alone.

At my first confrontation, my Archadian opponent slumped before I had even reached him, his throat cut by a wicked, curving blade.

'Come on,' Rikken shouted, grinning at the adrenaline, 'let's get the bastard!'

We ran together, fought a crew of mechanics suddenly turned to defence. When we reached our target Rikken stood guard as I bent. I thrust my arm into the tangled wires and green-glowing circuits of the shield's motherboard and pulled them free.

As I ripped, I heard the reverberation of men in armour tramping closer. The true soldiers, coming to the airship's defence. Rikken swore, I swore, and we ran again through the chaos, my wrist trailing wire and circuitry, the deck sparking with shot and recoil around us.

Fran hung out of the Maenad's hatch, eyes wide as she called to us, arm extended as though she could cross the distance.

I gestured upwards as I ran, shouting, 'Gijuk! Fire!' Rikken added the same, in his deeper, louder voice. Fran turned to the Maenad's innards and took up the cry.

The Maenad recoiled as Gijuk fired his fourth attempt. The recoil alone was terrifying, the Maenad jolted that much further away from us.

Then the missile hit the airship, as we leaped from the hold.

This time, no shield impeded the strike.

I remember bodies, bodies we had made, hanging in the air as Rikken and I jumped, and the Archadian ship fell away. Drums of supplies, circuitry, spent bullets and corpses lifted off the deck, suspended by inertia in a terrifyingly endless moment. I remembered, too, the great void of sky yawning beneath us, the eternally hungry blue, and the twinge of normality at the feeling that I would lose a shoe to the sucking depth.

A shoe, or everything.

On the Maenad, Fran sank to her knees, reaching for us, lips moving soundlessly. We weren't going to make it.

Then suddenly, our fall was arrested.

Fran had not been reaching. Throwing. Two magicite stones, spellstones, evidently purloined from Balthier's bottomless supply of alchemy, lobbed across the void, pecking first Rikken then myself.

The float spell blossomed around us with the familiar sulphurous stink. A moment of stillness eased into a drift.

The assault guns firing around us, I watched as another missile launched from above, the Maenad recoiling further dangerous lengths away.

Behind us, the Cruiser took a critical hit.

More dust, more rivets pinging off our ship; a strange, rippling tension in the air behind me. Beside me, Rikken's eye went wide, and then I knew what was about to happen.

Deprived even of the promise of a fatal fall, we curled around each other and hung on tight.

In a back-searing burst, the Archadian Cruiser exploded.

Shock waves shoved at us and our bubble of Mist. We whirled through that uncontrollable terror, back and forth, catching eye-watering glimpses as a mushroom cloud engulfed the Cruiser, then another, and another. The very air sucked out of our lungs to feed the blaze, we were gasping and dry, an ocean receding before the tidal wave.

Which, when it came, proved to be a wall of solid heat that threw us forward—into the hold towards which we had been so desperately aiming.

The Cruiser died in a chain reaction. Gijuk's final missile strike must have arrowed into the hold, into the engine deck just beyond, hitting something critical. The skystone core, perhaps, or stores of missiles and other like incendiaries.

Miraculously aboard the Maenad, I stood up, uncertain. I wiped my face and discovered myself bleeding, from my ears and nose and a crease across my ribcage. Groaning, Rikken made no move to regain his feet.

Even the Bangaa dropped the assault guns, staring as the Cruiser's destruction continued.

In moments, Balthier was there, watching the Cruiser fall away from us, the wind in his hair. Whatever he wanted to say, I knew instinctively that I did not want to hear it. He would claim a triumph even out of total destruction. If his grin appeared more rictus than charm, no one said anything, though Fran looked at him the once, then to the side and away.

His voice came distanced by the whine in my ears. 'I told you, Feathers, I know what I'm doing.'

He patted the Maenad's hull, a touch which resonated strangely in this pained silence.

* * *

This sickened me: the questioning of the only surviving Judge.

He bore a mortal wound. It took no torment to draw information out of him, only Balthier, crouched by the dying soldier's side, withholding the potion that would ease him out of this life to the next. The Judge did not know the logbooks, or flight patterns, or any of the information necessary to further our campaign, but what he knew was terrifying enough.

Archadia had destroyed Nabudis.

Nabudis, once the capital of the kingdom of Nabradia, gracing the centre of a gigantic lake. It had not been taken, nor conquered: destroyed. Just as we had destroyed the Cruiser, with no hope for salvation or recovery.

The Judge spoke of nethicite as the weapon.

'Manufacted nethicite,' Balthier spat. 'Dr Cid's latest deadly addition to the Archadian arsenal—'

But the Judge shook his head, fitfully. 'Not—not manu— The Magister who deployed ... he called it deifacted— What force unleashed, the buildings turned to cinder and ash in a single fell stroke. People— The people were gone, as though to vapour, Nabradia vanquished without a single Archadian fallen. Blessed— The blessed stone—'

Even in the hold's poor light, I saw Balthier pale, his eyes ablaze for his stark emotion.

'Deifacted nethicite is stone by hands of the gods,' Fran said, quiet. 'If manufacted nethicite is by hands of man, with a destructive capacity limited by minds of men—'

'Then who knows what destruction a god might imagine.' Balthier gripped the Judge by the collar of his breastplate, and shook him. The man cried out. 'Where moves Archadia hence?'

One front decimated, Archadia moved now on Nalbina, the last bastion before entry into the midlands kingdom of Dalmasca. But the ripples of this deifacted nethicite spread far.

In the wake of Nabradia's defeat, Bhujerba's neutral stance was no longer so stable. The Bhujerban Marquis looked set to cede to Archadia's demands soon enough—that, or witness the sky-city Bhujerba fall from the skies.

'—and well comes his capitulation. What purpose in holding back their pitiful earthborne nethicite when Archadia wields godtouched stone?' The Judge whispered it, gleeful, fevered eyes glittering. 'Archadia's forges a new history, where all nations will bear our name as stamp.'

Balthier rocked back on his heels, and held out the potion. Before the Judge could steel himself enough to reach for it, Balthier threw the flask through the still-open hatch. He rose, expressionless, and walked away.

The Judge died two hours later, drowning in blood.

With a practicality born of practice, Rikken stripped the Judges' corpses and dressed them in Rozarrian uniforms. With a gunshot at point-blank range, he mutilated the faces beyond recognition. I knew he had been performing exactly this aspect of our subterfuge on each ship we boarded, yet this was the first time I stood to witness.

It sickened me further to watch as Ba'gamnan and Rinok sifted through the Judges' armour and weapons, claiming what they would.

We consigned the bodies to the blue, where they would fall in the shattered wake of the destroyer, their corpses adding to our myth. Leaning against the hull, yet in the shadows of the hold, Balthier gave a lazy representation of the Archadian salute, a vague and foppish respect offered to those who had once been his own.

* * *

Whether it was our speedy attack or uncertain circumstance, the dying Cruiser never transmitted an enemy sighted signal. We were passed by the next Fighter on patrol, neither stopped nor confronted.

Our subterfuge continued.

'I know I'm good,' Balthier said, 'but even Archadians they can't be this stupid.'

'Are you being modest?' Fran asked, amused.

The skypirates were in the kitchen, in that time of least activity, a gusty dawn chasing away the last of the night's clouds. From the scent of spice and fume, they were drinking mulled wine, too caught up in their physical proximity to be aware of the approach of another.

I ducked to one side, flat against the corridor wall, and listened.

'There's so many of them,' Balthier said, quietly. 'I wish we could have got that last one's logbooks, we're flying blind now, especially if half the armada's coming back from Nabudis. This has gone on too long, and they should have caught us out by now.'

Fran shrugged. 'Each time marks improvement. We know the territory. And we know the enemy.'

'Yes,' Balthier said, in an odd tone. 'We are getting good at this kind of destruction, aren't we?'

A silence reigned, during which I could imagine Fran's slow turn of head, meeting Balthier's eyes, before she would lower her gaze.

'Here we are,' Balthier said, mocking. 'The best backstabbing butchers in the business. At least, we were, until my father decided to destroy an entire city in a single move.'

'Balthier.' Fraught.

'That's not even my name!' The anger had been there for a while, but was voiced sharp enough to make me startle.

'Because you gave it to yourself? By any other name, you are the same.'

Another silence. 'My father—'

Fran slapped the bench, a palm flat on the metallic surface. 'No pasts, Balthier. No histories. We fly forwards, not in circles.'

'If I want a future, I don't know how much longer I can live by that.'

'I,' Fran said, coolly. 'You ever think of the singular foremost. What of us, our future?'

'I don't know. I can't hold you. You want to be—free.'

'You want to ease your pride by amending the mistakes of another man's life.'

'Not his mistakes,' Balthier said. 'Not my father's mistakes. I want to ease my pride by amending my own mistakes.'

'When you make your first,' Fran said, 'I'll be sure to let you know.'

Balthier exhaled hard, his breath uneven. 'I might have to hold you to that promise.'

'Willingly, my friend.'

* * *

In the aftermath of Nabudis' destruction, we should have reconsidered our continued involvement. Yet, but for his discussion with Fran, Balthier seemed inclined to ignore the change in circumstance.

I could not help dwelling on Fran's words to Margrace, delivered those centuries ago in Balfonheim. Had our involvement here contributed in any way to Archadia's decision to use this deadly deifacted nethicite?

I hoped Margrace wrung his lesson from the ruins.

The patrolling Fighters turned serious, no longer seeking their fly-by smiles and cheerful waves. Their patrols increased in density and speed, a desperate hunt for the invisible Rozarrian destroyer—a deadly airship of a size to destroy a primed Cruiser.

If I had expected Ba'gamnan and his sibs to bring up Balthier's unofficial promise—to leave the battlefield by the quickest route possible—they did not. Our piratical horde was tawdry and large, and continued to bloom as Balthier took on further ships, as though our success with the Cruiser came by plan and not chance. The Bangaa crew was well-satisfied with his successes, and saw no need to tug at the chain of command.

Balthier's stage-bred confidence developed an otherworldly air. He wore an unshakeable conviction in his own ability to survive, thick as a velvet cloak, and as obvious. His mantle engulf the Maenad whole, until even Rikken and myself developed a habit of risktaking as we boarded our prey. As long as Balthier stood unscathed, his crew would survive the worst of wars.

I did not want to believe in Balthier's invulnerability. Even at the worst of it, I dreamed nightmarish and woke filled with misgiving. When Balthier's fa�ade cracked, our end would not come quietly upon us, but rather with an almighty boom.

I was right.

* * *

On the horizon, only the odd vagrant moonslip defined the monolithic airship, catching the round of the hull. The sky was dark, and full of isolate rainclouds, sweeping over us on moment only to leave us clear and dry the next.

'What is that?' Rikken asked, dazed.

We three manned the cockpit while Balthier slept a shift, myself as temporary navigator, Fran in the pilot's chair, Rikken to relay commands. I split myself between staring at the size of the thing on Fran's display, and trying to determine what it might be via the night-fogged visual.

Fran sent Rikken to wake Balthier. She left the pilot's seat and gestured me to evacuate hers.

It was no battleship, nor supply ship, not out here. None of the logbooks we held suggested anything should be here—but here it was, large and hulking, and moving on a slow, deadly nocturnal drift.

'It's Archadian.' Balthier rubbed sleep from his eyes even as he took the controls. 'Small chance they'd let something that size into their battlefield otherwise. But apart from that, I have no idea what else it could be. Huge.'

'A freighter?'

Fran hesitated, then turned to me. 'The Sky Fortress, aloft before its time?'

We looked at her. I knew what the Sky Fortress was: Archadia's city-in-the-sky, another monstrous part of the arsenal in development when I had left Draklor Laboratory. Balthier's gaze had a likewise knowing gleam.

'No,' Balthier answered for me. 'It's not. There's not enough magicite in the world with enough power to get that giant Archadian folly launched.'

'Not even deifacted nethicite?'

Balthier sucked in air through his teeth, then frowned at the monolith's visual. 'Whatever this thing is, it's too small to be the Fortress.'

We could have let the monolith drift on by without disturbing its path.

An airship so large would not be brought down so easily as a Fighter, as a Cruiser. There would be ample time even in night's stygian murk for some desperately struggling member of the monolith's vast crew to identify us and our appearance, and to relay that information to the Archadian fleet. Every Archadian ship would home in on this area, ready to destroy the sneaking Rozarrians who had got one on over them for so long.

We should have let it pass.

Yet coulds and shoulds did not take into account Balthier's lazily confident mood, nor our own belief in his invulnerability. We were at need to engage, too; the purvamas were scarcer in this region, the ability to lurk and strike in the dark growing fewer. The Bangaa cohort was restless, and our stolen logbooks in need of supplement.

I spoke no protest to Balthier's instruction to fire.

Even then, whatever my foreboding, I thought the airship's size its sole oddity. Promising a beneficial outcome, the monolith flew without a shield.

The first round from the missile launcher took out the weapons deck atop the monolith's apex. The second round penetrated the cockpit, and the third penetrated deep into the engine deck. Our screens raised, the assault guns targeted the monolith's many rings, shattering them one by one.

The monolith's slow motion became a drift, coincidentally on course for the Maenad. Deft, Balthier lifted us through our disguising purvama rubble and clouds. We were still hidden, still lethal. I tapped through new bearings to the guns below.

Strangely distanced by size and the thickening rain, the monolith's hull lit in speckles of fire. The yellow and orange glow showed its outlines, stark.

No return fire came.

The monolith's drift brought it to a collision course which, if it had impacted, would have consumed the whole purvama cloud in which we hid. Balthier, hesitant to expose the Maenad to visual identification, was forced to move us beyond our rocky shelter and into the open sky.

If the monolith was going to fire on us, it would be it now, with the Maenad silhouetted against the backlit storm clouds.

'Ye lot down there, copy.'

I grabbed the comm. 'Gijuk!'

'Listen, I'm taking on a lot of rain—'

Balthier took the comm. ' Gijuk, can you see the ship from the hold?'

'Yer, through the storm.'

'Right. There's a shadow along the hull's curve—if you hold out your hand at arm's length and use it as a sight, about a hand's width below the centre ring. Target that, and let's end this quickly.'

'What is it?' I asked.

'Air intake,' Balthier said, without emphasis. 'Mixing with the Mist to assist distribution. A strike there will go to the engine's heart. They're not usually so exposed, but in this case, let's take advantage of it.'

There was something chilling about his monotone.

Fran picked up quicker than I did. 'You know this ship?'

'I know what it is,' Balthier said. 'I've seen it before, but tried to forget.' He sounded sick. 'It's a prison transport.'

'Sound and ready,' the Bangaa confirmed, from above.

I strained against the blackness. A prison transport: of that size, in this location, I could only guess who she transported. A cargo of Balfonheimers, collected from a town which could have been lost and captured weeks ago, and us unknowing. Or the survivors of Nabudis, being shipped away from that wasted city as prisoners of war.

The size of the transport let me know one thing: it would be holding civilians, non-combatants. There were not enough warriors in this field to fill the ship.

Before I could countermand Balthier's order to fire the fatal shot, I stopped. A prison transport full of civilians, yet it would also be manned by Archadian prison guards.

And here we were, exposed against backlit clouds, the classic make and model of the Maenad instantly identifiable, several shots already fired to prove us the deadly battleship we were.

Exposed, plain as an actor under the spotlight.

Small wonder Balthier sounded sick. The game was up.

'Ceasefire,' I said, thickly.

On the comm., Balthier's hand shook. He clenched his fingers tight. 'Gijuk, target remains active. You see the dark spot on the hull, below the second ring—'

Violently, Fran slapped the comm. from Balthier's hand.

They stared at each other, Balthier motionless, while Fran's chest heaved once and caught.

Gijuk's harsh growl came up from the deck, hollow. 'Balthier? If ye mean the intake dock, then the target's aligned.'

Balthier's jaw rippled.

'Don't make this mistake,' Fran said.

I added, 'Leave it, Balthier. They're abandoning the ship, those first two strikes must have got them good enough. You can see the survival pods detaching, maybe there's no point following through—'

'We'll target the pods after the ship is brought down,' Balthier said.

'You can't,' Fran said.

This, after everything, was the crux.

'I can,' he said.

'Not like this,' I snapped. 'They're defenceless. They always were, Balthier.'

His smile came forced, thick and syrupy. 'We knew this was going to happen. Every survivor is a witness, and we've exposed ourselves. It's in our contract with Margrace to keep ourselves concealed—'

'Fuck your contract,' I shouted, 'those are people out there, not witnesses. It's over, Balthier, let's get out of here—'

'We could clear this area before dawn,' Fran said. 'Go to ground on Par-Dorstonia; Nono will go for us to the Holy Mount to collect our payment from Margrace. We have met—exceeded—the Rozarrian's expectation.'

'We've done enough,' I said, harsh. 'Spare the daft actions for the so-called heroes in this charade. Leading men know when to exit stage left; it's the heroes that hang on until they die.'

Balthier's eyes widened.

'I have this much blood on my hands already, Feathers. All this death has to mean something, has to make a difference. Enough, you say? We'll never be able to do enough. I can't cut and run, not again.'

The escape pods were fragile, reminiscent of the old rubber rafts days when fleets required oceans. Looking out into that rain and moonlashed night, I fancied I could see faces peering up at us, eyes white and wild.

'You truly intend to fire?' I asked. 'You'll rip them apart—'

'I've been killing people since the day Margrace sent me out here. What's the difference now?'

'I don't know,' I said, 'except for the fact that they have no chance of survival if you target them. Everyone deserves that chance. How many have given you the chance?'

Impatient or distracted, Gijuk took the argument out of our hands.

The prison transport was constructed for low-strata flying, and as such the hatch was not constructed as an airlock. The missile went in deep. In seconds, the burning ship echoed the sky's thunder, hollow and tortured; overstressed bulkheads, lurching rings, the whole trajectory of the article shuddering, slowly, then suddenly speeding.

With a roar of distressed air, the transport fell.

The monolith met the ocean, hissing in agony, the plume visible even from this height and in the rain. Void swallowed the airship's orange and gold flickers, slow and inexorable, until minutes later there was nothing but black and smoke, and a sky full of survivors' pods.

Balthier leaned forward. 'Strike coordinates, if either of you will please.'

'I will not please,' Fran said. 'You're not a murderer.'

'Who are you to judge?'

'I've been here before,' Fran said. 'I've killed for no more than my satisfaction. As though those standing in opposition were the ones standing between myself and my freedom: I have cut them down, thinking their absence will bring me closer to what I seek. But it does not; with each grave, the distance to the goal is greater, if not the path confounded. I judge, Balthier, because I am a murderer. I say you are not.'

Flatly, Balthier said, 'Feathers, take the navigator's chair and relay coordinates to the gun deck.'

'Do it yourself,' I said.

He shrugged and raised the comm. 'Rikken. You can read a navigational display?'

'Yeah, but slowly—'

'Stop it,' I shouted. 'You'll get Rikken to do it? Who are you going to get to pull the trigger?'

'Come up, Rikken. Bring Ba'gamnan with you.'

How was I to know what Balthier was capable of doing?

He brought the Maenad to the cloud of jettisoned pods, and brought it to hold. Leaving Rikken busy at noting the coordinates of even those pods we could not see, be it through storm or night's distance, Balthier then climbed slow and careful to the upper deck. He kicked Gijuk off the guns and ripped him gut to gullet, a verbal lashing, for firing without command.

Balthier ushered Ba'gamnan into the missile launcher's chair. The Bangaa sat and scowled at the weather, even as Balthier switched on the spotlight and turned the beam through the lashing rain. Fran and I, paired in strange horror, followed Balthier through his efforts, watching as the light targeted the closest survivors' pod.

Muffled cries rose from the drift of the tiny airship.

'Fire at will,' Balthier said.

Following the spotlight's arc, I saw it, just as Fran did. And Ba'gamnan.

The Bangaa's nostrils flared wide and he snorted wetly, a disrespectful action, as though tasting something that disgusted him.

'They've not a fighting chance,' Ba'gamnan snapped. 'I'll take down a warship and risk myself against the best, I'll hunt down a beastie my size or larger, but I'll not harm the likes of those, just crawled free of their eggshells. They've not a fighting chance, ye piece of scum pirate!'

With the same lethality of motion I'd last seen in a street fight, Balthier shoved the Bangaa out of the way and took the gun's seat. He aligned the muzzle with the spotlight.

Only then did Balthier see what the rest of us had seen.

Despite the dazed look on his face, his finger hovered at the trigger.

Fran wiped rain from her eyes. 'Balthier, I would that you would let that gun go.'

'Or what,' he asked, 'you'll stop me?'

It sounded almost like a plea.

Fran inclined her head.

He considered it for too long, long enough even Ba'gamnan snarled at him for being a pride-bound fool. Balthier eased the gun, the pivot spinning it out of alignment, and switched off the spotlight.

In the renewed darkness, I yet saw afterimages: they had been pressed against the pod's port hatch, pleading and desperate in the sudden light, unknowing if enemies came or saviors. The countless faces of the women and children, brown-skinned and dust-blonde as so many Nabradians were, spared from a second death.

'Let's go home,' Balthier said.

'And where's that?' I asked, disinclined to sneer.

'Wherever Fran says it is,' said Balthier, and staggered into the Maenad's depths.


	10. Retracing Old Steps

Breakfast was a miserable affair of gruel and water, with lunch likewise unpromising. It had been too long since a stop-off at one of the skypirates' hidden stashes.

The mutters at the food came as a symptom of greater discontent.

Ba'gamnan witnessed Balthier faltering. For all that Ba'gamnan himself refused to fire on children, for Balthier to back down showed only weakness, a lack of resolve. It was fate, Ba'gamnan whispered to his sibs, catching up to the prideful pirate: as though the moment Balthier let the gun go, he had lost his ability to survive no matter the circumstance.

Further disenchanting the Bangaa had been the realisation our course was now set to return to Balfonheim. Limping back to port, tail between our legs

I was waiting for it. When the fight started below, I ran, cursing the lack of aught to hand but a dagger.

With the skill behind his luck, Balthier held his own, his knife low as he circled. Ba'gamnan menaced with his claws, his savage jagged blade, and taunts. Balthier's motions were lithe and darting, as he desperately avoided the clinch Ba'gamnan strove to close: scarce a fraction of the Bangaa's weight, proximity would hardly be in Balthier's favour.

Balthier shouted at me before I could move to even the odds. 'I can bloody well do this, Feathers! Stand clear!'

Fran arrived.

Expecting her to leap to the defence, Ba'gamnan's lurking sibs stopped leaning on their crates and circled her, menacing. She spread her fingers wide to show her lack of armament, and settled against the ladder, watching the fight, expressionless.

'Stand clear, I can do this,' Balthier repeated, and only then realised Fran had not moved towards him.

Ba'gamnan must have seen when Balthier's heart broke, because the Bangaa moved like a snake, scoring Balthier across the belly and with a backlash across the throat. The latter looked horrible, the red patter so bright against white linen, but Balthier's shock was minimal. Only the fact that Balthier had thrown himself away from the belly-blow instead of doubling into the pain saved his life.

Eyes narrowed, the skypirate turned to ice.

Ba'gamnan was damnably quick, but Balthier was quicker. He bent below the next blow, and tried to punch his knife through the scales plating the Bangaa's ribs. Harder than they looked, Balthier recoiled and kicked Ba'gamnan in the groin, as violently as he could.

Lizard groins were as hard-plated as the rest of them.

Both jarred, the combatants staggered clear and glared at each other.

Ba'gamnan flexed the claws of his free hand. 'Reckon ye're a hard man, do ye? How's about I mark that bonnie cheek of yours, so all the lookers know just how hard and bloody ye like it t'come?'

Ba'gamnan sidled in. Balthier lunged, shoulder first, a mad full-body throw. A mistake, considering the weight difference, but it was a tried and true Balthier tactic—to do the least likely thing.

Surprised by the move, Ba'gamnan lapsed long enough for Balthier to sling his arms around the Bangaa's neck, a farcical embrace, and climbed aboard.

Straddling Ba'gamnan's neck, Balthier's fingers threatened the deep-set eyes. 'Stand down, lizard trash!'

'I'll not take yer orders, ponce!'

Then Balthier, grim-faced, did something. Ba'gamnan howled, deafening, his sibs lurching forward as if to his defence. Fran moved to hold out the barring arm this time, stopping them.

Ba'gamnan howled again, staggering in my direction. For a moment, I stared down his tooth-lined muzzle of doom, a gape that could have taken my forearm to shoulder with ease.

Balthier had his fingers hooked through Ba'gamnan's nostrils. He pulled back, hard, eliciting another howl.

Deprived Hume sight, Bangaa had a sense of smell that made of their noses a sensitive, delicate organ.

Staggering, Ba'gamnan went to his knees, a slow keel over.

Balthier's knife came down hard, pressing across the sensitive muzzle. 'Call it over, scum! With everyone here, listening to you whine! Call it over!'

'I'm done,' Ba'gamnan whimpered. 'Done, done, done.'

Balthier spat blood to one side, cursed the loosening of a molar, and then took one last booted heel to Ba'gamnan's nose and consigned him to the brig.

'We don't have a brig,' I pointed out.

'Improvise,' Balthier said, wild-eyed from the adrenaline.

The only lockable doors on the ship, I realised with dismay, were to my cabin, or to Balthier's.

No argument as to whose bed Ba'gamnan would end up warming.

* * *

Two hours after the fight, the Maenad settled into yet another scattered field of purvama rubble. This one was scant cover—we relied more upon the murky cloud and the approach of night to conceal us.

As we waited, an airship approached.

Sleek, fast, and of a silhouette that I could not match to make or model, the airship had a flare to the design that made it look like a toy designed by a boy with something to prove, almost as frivolous as the design of the Maenad itself.

The incoming airship was as Archadian as the day, and it clearly had no business being in a warzone.

'There's no attempt at evasion,' Fran noted. 'Either the crew have not sighted us, or have no concerns for us.'

'Odd, though. What make or model do you think it is? Not a Fighter, surely.'

'Scarce larger than one. I estimate her crew at five, perhaps ten. A sufficiently large cargo hold to transport, but not large enough to consider her a supply ship.'

'Fleet?'

'Too customized,' Fran shook her head. 'She looks like a private craft, if equipped sufficiently for battle.'

'But not equipped for a frontal assault,' I noted, critical.

Fran nodded agreement, and glanced at Balthier for his comment.

He shrugged. He eyed the display with the same disinterest he had worn since the prison transport. Most everything I knew about Balthier irritated me, but this disinterest, now, grated on nerves worn to breaking. Any fool could take a ship to war: we needed that ego and indomitable survivor's edge to bring us home.

'I reckon,' I said, with deliberate cant to antagonise, 'we could take her out as we have the others. Her weapons and her speed, maneuverability aside: her shields register as barely there. '

Balthier shrugged again. 'Doesn't matter how fast she's going if we can get off one good round.'

'Right,' I said, brisk. 'Order to fire when you will, captain.'

As we watched, the airship turned towards us, those twin-forward shafts pointing, so it seemed, directly at our cockpit. I felt a sickening worry, but then she continued beyond us. I let my breath out slowly.

'She's still not aware,' Fran said. 'Balthier?'

In Ba'gamnan's absence, and with Gijuk reprimanded for his premature shot at the prison transport, it was Rinok who manned the missile launcher above. She was untried.

Yet if the airship continued on her current trajectory, this was a shot even a child could make.

I reached for the comm. 'Rinok: Archadian ship, make unknown, bows on. Do you think you're ready for action?'

No hesitation. 'Pass the bearing; range preset to three point five.'

'Right.' I nudged Balthier's chair. 'Our best chance is now.'

He turned, with an expression on his face that pulled at the ripening bruise from his brawl. The stubborn tilt to his chin bared the scabbed line across his throat. 'Why are you asking me? Do you really think I'm in control here?' He shook then, as though flicking off water or responsibility. He stood as if to leave. 'Have a go if you fancy your chances.'

The Archadian airship ghosted along, trailing cloud through the grey sky. Her crew would be examining our dusk-list shadow by now, screens and visuals, wondering if we were simply a denser cluster of cloud and rubble or a threat to eliminate.

Oddly enough, my thoughts went to Ba'gamnan, locked into my berth. If we were shot, he would die in the best way possible: ignorant.

The airship turned through a tight, showy arc, canting about her keel, even the haze of rain appearing to caress her well-scrolled hull. From a break in the cloud, a brief flare of the setting sunlight set fire to her curves.

I lifted the comm. again. 'Rinok, stand ready—'

I paused. The atmosphere in the cockpit had changed.

A slight, bare sigh escaping wet lips, Fran's eyes were on the airship. There was something that felt indecent about her expression, though I could not place why I should feel embarrassed at the sight of her, until I felt the sudden heat at my shoulder, radiating off Balthier's stiff form.

I glanced up. Balthier, too, was staring at the airship with his lips both licked wet and open, as though witnessing the approach of a lover.

To think I had mocked the thought of love at first sight. Even skypirates fell, so it seemed.

Because I knew, I had already lowered the comm. by the time Balthier said, 'Hold it a moment, Feathers.'

'Right, what is it? What do you know about the ship? And make up your mind fast, Balthier, because as nippy as she is we've only a small interval to recalibrate.'

Balthier touched Fran's shoulder. As she looked back at him, he grinned, charmingly offensive, and she—lowered her lids, thick lashes veiling her eyes. Coquettishly.

They were wrapped in their cocoon again, almost as instantly and wordlessly as they had fallen out before, united in shared lust thick enough to make me swoon, had that intensity been directed anywhere near me.

'I've had enough of death and destruction,' Balthier said, a renewed bounce to his tone. 'Playing Rozarria's death squad no longer suits the circumstances. See, I've an idea a trifle more fitting to our role as dashing pirates and daring mercenaries.'

'Please, no,' I said.

'A way to increase our slush fund.'

'Oh no,' I said.

'Be positive about the outcome for once in your life,' Balthier said, gleeful, as if he had not been sunk in a gloom fit to drown us all these last days. Curving over Fran's chair, he brushed his fingertips across her shoulder. 'We're going to take that little beauty. She's ours.'

It was the first time I could remember him using the plural pronoun.

* * *

Profit had never truly informed Balthier's tactical and strategic actions, I realised. He chose his engagements based on how much the success would bulwark his ego.

In the airship's wake, we moved out of our concealment and assumed a cargo ship's more typical action. It was some time before they noticed our presence, and then, as Balthier had no doubt hoped, they approached us along a friendly trajectory.

The paint on the airship's hull named it the YPA-G84, a test combat Fighter Class. In the cockpit, only one shadowed figure showed at the pilot's console, until the hatch to the main deck slid open, and a second figure marched through, in the full helmed compliment of a Judge Magister.

My heart sank. No mere Judge: a Judge Magister. Only five of the Imperial deathbringers existed, and one of them had to be boarding the Maenad.

After a brief exchange with the pilot, the Magister left. The pilot picked up the comm. and spoke.

'YPA-G84 requesting contact from the Maenad.'

We exchanged glances. Energy hummed through Balthier, his smile devious. His sulks had gone the way of his sense of shame.

'Don't look at me,' I said, disgruntled. 'This is your idea.'

He tutted at me, took the comm. in hand. Daring fate more than customary, Balthier dispelled his usual bluff of a northerner's lilt, and responded with his crisp Archadian accent.

'What can I do you for, YPA-G84?'

'What is your destination, captain?'

'We're returning from a pickup in Calderna,' Balthier replied.

The pilot failed to pick up that Balthier avoided his question. 'Open your hatch, Captain, and set your ship to hold. We are preparing a boarding party.' A hesitation. 'Have your crew stand ready for inspection; the Judge Magister wishes to personally supervise the transfer of supplies.'

Balthier clenched his hand into a fist, yet when he spoke it was rich with triumph. Fate and her vagaries. 'Acknowledged.'

Fran rose as soon as Balthier signed off, with intent to equip herself. She looked focused, arrow-like, thoughts already on the coming battle.

Balthier touched her shoulder as she passed. Her acknowledgment was surprising: she stopped entirely, took him by the forearm and held him, until his own hand clasped her forearm in return.

'Right,' Balthier said, warm and steady. 'Ready.'

'For what,' I asked, resigned. 'You two might communicate through osmosis, but I have no idea what you're planning.'

'Much as we did before, Feathers. Judges aboard our ship proved enough that the other destroyer held their fire. If a Judge Magister is mad enough to step aboard, that's an even greater insurance against their retaliation.'

Fran paused at the ladder for long enough to feign astonishment. 'You are growing repetitive.'

'Ah, but this time there's a twist. With a Judge Magister, we have a perfect hostage scenario. Demand they evacuate the YPA-G84, and we move in.'

'You're assuming you can bring a Magister down,' I said. 'Assuming Ba'gamnan's discontented sibs will do what you want, instead of selling us to the Archadians. Not to mention it's hardly likely the Magister's going to step aboard alone.'

'Details,' Balthier chided. He slung into the pilot's chair for long enough to lower the Maenad to hold. 'Overplanning does tend to reduce one's ability to exploit spontaneity.'

I informed him he was mad, mercenary, and likely suicidal.

'Do I look the kind of man to deny that?' was all he said, grinning.

'In the next few minutes,' I said, acerbic, 'I anticipate I will either be the part owner of a sleek Archadian double-winged test combat airship, or dead.'

'You forget one thing, Feathers. You're under Margrace's umbrella for this operation, aren't you? I don't think he'd be too happy with your accepting perks.'

If I had something on me, I would have thrown it at him. As it was, Balthier hastened down the ladder ahead of me.

For long moments, nothing happened. The two airships hovered, caught within each other's glossair fields. The gangway extended between the YPA-G84's hold and the Maenad, the grapnels hooked and locked. I lingered near the comm. by the hatch, ready to contact to Rinok on the gun deck if there came any sign of threat.

In a flickering moment of vulnerability, the Judge Magister teetered across the gangway. He came flanked by two well-equipped Judges. One reached the Magister's elbow, and insured his footing held.

They marched across the void, boots echoing.

We made no attempt to bluff this time. The second the Magister stepped aboard, he and his Judges saw the guns, the hold screens, the Bangaa, the Viera, and realised. A half-second of uncertainty, and the three drew weapons simultaneously.

I had my gun cocked and a blade in my free hand, the former aimed and finger pulling the trigger. Uncertain footing aside, the Judge Magister was good: an unknown spell ripped through me before I could fire, backlash recoiling from the hull to my side, destroying the comm. in the process even as I fell.

Rolling, I threw myself into the melee. My blade struck, it fell from spell-numbed fingers, but my fist was potent enough, my gun primed.

Yet my addition to the affray came belated.

As if the Magister and his associates had been ready for treachery, they danced through what we could muster against them, the firefight begun and finalised in moments. One Judge was down, with Raz and Gijuk dazed and reeling before he fell; the second Judge had bolted for the gangway on the instant, calling for troops.

I found myself up against the Judge Magister's imposing form. Hunched as he was, he looked wounded. I slammed the muzzle of my gun against the side of his neck, where the armour betrayed a dusky flesh, vulnerable.

Only then did I see why the Magister hunched.

Everything stopped again, and Balthier betrayed himself: 'No!'

Balthier made it too easy to forget his youth.

Fran was on her knees. The Magister curled behind her, swaying, his gauntlet in her hair and wrenching her head back. Against the column of her throat, he pressed his massive blade. Well aware of the strength of a Viera's thigh, he straddled Fran's prone form in a way immobilising her legs.

Another 'No—'

Her, or Balthier, crying out in that strangled stranger's voice?

Not a muscle twitched. My finger eased from my trigger.

'I can shout,' Balthier said, calm as though he had never screamed that first denial. 'To our darling holding her gun at your throat; to the gunner above, where we have a missile primed. Your holds are open, you're here alone, your ship's shields are weak. You're making a mistake.'

'You could shout,' said the Archadian, deep and as calm. 'You know what I will do, if you do.'

He was massive. He held Fran so well in one hand, the sword unwavering.

'I'm going to step back,' I told him, licking salt from my lips. 'My aim is very good, at this range. Greatswords are too heavy to hold in one hand like that, I can see your shoulder shaking, and I wouldn't want an accident. I suggest you sheathe your blade.'

The Magister laughed. 'How thoughtful.'

He moved his hand from Fran's hair to her throat, where black-gloved fingers spanned that graceful column. Only then did he sheathe his blade.

Balthier took a half-step forward, then stopped, and resumed his appearance of uncaring.

The Magister did not affect to notice. With his free hand, he reached to his helm, unbuckled two side clips, and lifted it off. Sinking to one knee, he set it beside Fran's thigh, her skin sheened gold with the sweat of stress and battle. When the Magister looked up, he revealed the dark skin and bald pate of a virile man, thick, curled white sideburns doing nothing to clear the mystery of his age.

By that dark skin, as gild as Fran's, he was no native Archadian. Yet, despite Archadia's attitude to foreigners, I had no doubt he was a true Magister.

He closed his eyes and swayed again. I saw the shadows beneath his eyes, the sallow nature underneath his colour, and wondered if he truly had been injured unseen.

Too many oddities struck me. A Magister should never have been a member of a boarding party to a humble cargo ship, especially not if he were injured. Add the unlikely test-model nature of the airship, the Magister's appearance, his seeming willingness to talk in lieu of battle—I suspected Balthier had like met his match, in one way or another.

The skypirate broke the silence. 'A stalemate, then.'

'No.' Fran for certain this time, crisp and clear.

The Magister shook his head, rueful. 'I suggest we declare it so! Shall we shake hands and break off the engagement, parting ways with a renewed appreciation of our mutual skills?'

Steady, I did not allow my gun to drop, even as I circled slowly. I found a position where I could see the gangway into the YPA-G84's hold, and still see Balthier's expression.

Balthier rolled his eyes at the Magister's words. 'I don't believe this.'

'With clarity, boy: you don't believe this,' the Magister nodded down at Fran, 'or you don't believe my offer?'

'This is a pirate ship, Magister, and you know what that means.'

'Do I?'

'No honour amongst thieves,' Balthier said. 'Kill her, and all you do is increase the share betwixt the rest of us. So I say, go on and do it. I'll be ever so grateful, I won't even shoot you in the back when I kick you off this ship.'

Balthier was bluffing a Magister. He had to be out of his mind to try.

Then, staring at Balthier's profile, I thought I saw a shadow of something else. A fanaticism, almost. How far would Balthier go to prove his point? Certainly not to the killing of children, but of innocents, or friends?

—yet Balthier must have seen something in the Magister that I had not. Instead of striking Fran down and retreating to his airship, the Magister deflated.

'Think about what you do,' the Magister urged. 'I have had enough of death. I want us to walk away from this intact.'

Balthier sauntered to the ladder, propped himself on a rung, and leaned back, nonchalant.

'Seeing as we'll be here for a while, I'm Balthier.'

'Call me Zecht,' said the Magister, after the briefest hesitation.

* * *

The YPA-G84 was not crewed to excess. On successfully regaining the YPA-G84's hold, the fleeing Judge summoned what manpower they had. A full complement of twelve stood armed at the other end of the gangway, prepared to move on the Magister's word.

Yet, despite our unconscious Bangaa beginning to stir, despite Nono's occasional exhaled curse, the Magister made no move to call for his troops.

The stalemate held.

'I have a question, Balthier. Do you intend to fly from this encounter by daylight, or simply creeping from puravma shadow to shadow?'

Balthier smiled, pleased at the recognition. 'You've worked it out, have you? Not quickly enough, I'm afraid.'

'Had I been quicker,' said Judge Magister Zecht, 'your ship might be on a one-way descent by now.'

'As I said, not quick enough.'

The Magister seemed inclined to muse. 'After Nabudis, I declined to join my comrades at the field of war in Nalbina. When I heard the stories of your actions, I had my suspicions. Incongruous tales, to hear of a supposedly Rozarrian airship whose crew had such passion for collecting mementos from her downed ships.'

'Notches in the bedhead,' Balthier said, with the same affected disinterest.

'Ha! Not a conventional taste in bedpartners, airships.'

'Do I look even remotely conventional to you?'

Balthier was unhappy the moment the words slipped out of his mouth, as Zecht took the opportunity to study him, carefully, piercingly.

Of a sudden, I recognised the Magister's sallow complexion, the shadowed eyes, even the unsteadiness on his feet and the force behind his words, as though articulating everything with care.

Judge Magister Zecht was drunk.

'You might have been somewhat conventional,' the Magister acknowledged. 'Three or four years ago, I ken, you wandered Archades' treed boulevards. Perhaps you wore a uniform, with your haircut incrementally shorter—but with your accent, pirate? Tsenoble High, at least, certainly not the lows of Trant or the Old Town. Did your family call you to task for some minor indiscretion and wound your pride enough you fled?' The Magister nodded, seemingly decided. 'Pride does wound so easily.'

At some point during the litany, Balthier flinched so barely I almost missed it; it was Fran who stirred, only to be pinned flat by the Magister, ungently.

Balthier did not look at his partner through the handling, not once. 'You should be delighting in my non-conventionality, Magister. It's the only reason you're still alive, and your airship still skyborne.'

Zecht inclined his head, as if in mimicry of Balthier's earlier gesture of acknowledgment; it seemed gratitude in these circumstances was a social convention. 'You intend to come out of this war with more than a reputation.'

'Certainly. We are not, as you deduced, particularly loyal to either Empire.'

'You are a profiteer then. You do not fly by the old skypirates' code, for freedom and integrity.'

A scant hesitation. 'I don't invest capital in unprofitable affairs, if that's what you mean.'

Zecht looked suddenly, overwhelmingly tired.

I wondered, again, at the discordant chain of events that had led us to this scenario.

As an Archadian, Zecht should never have bargained, as a Magister should never have boarded this ship. But if I assessed him as a man, sick of death as he proclaimed himself to be, it seemed likely that he questioned Balthier purely to find a way out of this scenario.

But that was not all. Zecht could have just walked away, had it come to that. He was as much hunting for a bargain as Balthier did—as much as Margrace had been, those weeks ago.

But what could skypirates on an antiqued airship do for a tired and drunken Judge Magister?

'Presumably,' Zecht said, 'you hope to end this encounter with something more than your survival.'

'More than something, indeed.'

Despite his weariness, Zecht smiled, in good humour. Calculating. Buccaneering. Mercenary. And Zecht was a Magister, one of the Archadian Emperor's incorruptible bloodsworn generals.

The Archadian Empire was not so monolithic as it seemed.

'I have a proposal,' Zecht said. 'Would you care to end this conversation with several millions worth of nethicite?'

How Balthier avoided dropping his guard, I'll not know.

'You'll have to make me a better offer than that!'

I swore. Even Zecht's eyes widened. Better than—

—but then the Magister followed where Balthier's gaze turned, with such wistful longing, to the YPA-G84's unusual curves.

The Magister contemplated his own airship for some time.

I was the only one that saw Balthier's gaze drop back to Fran's bowed head, where his calm crumpled to an expression horribly forlorn.

* * *

'Alright, I'll bite. Where did you even get that much nethicite to begin with?'

'It is,' the Magister said, dryly, 'the first and last of Bhujerba's resource to the Archadian war effort.'

'So the blockade's been lifted, ' Balthier stated. 'I thought as much after I heard Nabudis had fallen.'

As if sickness swept over him, Zecht's breath came heavy. 'There is truth in that. Archadia has what they want, from Bhujerba and Nabudis. Demobilisation takes time.'

'The problem with nethicite,' Balthier said, 'is that it's tainted as a commodity. I can imagine well enough what happened to Nabudis. Archadia will not be pleased if that much nethicite, manufacted or naturally mined, falls out of Imperial hands.'

'No,' Zecht said, 'you cannot imagine. I was at Nabudis when the city fell. Nethicite's worth—will only increase, in the wake of that. Your profit will be what you make of it. I ask only that you do not treat with Archadia.'

Balthier looked at him for a long, slow moment.

'You misunderstand. I well know where lies the taint on that stone, on the user. If you give me the nethicite, I'll not be selling it. Not to Rozarria, not to Archadia, not even to towns along the way to fuel their combine harvesters or irrigation fields. You give me that much nethicite, and I'll gift the lot of it to the ocean's depths.' A pause, during which Balthier rubbed his chin, ostentatiously considering the state of affairs. 'Without a profit pending, I'm sure you can see the nethicite is worthless to me.'

'You want the ship.'

'Oh, yes,' Balthier said.

'The ship,' Zecht said, steadily, 'will be yours, if you take the nethicite with it.'

'You were at Nabudis,' Balthier repeated, slow, yet with no trace of languor or affectation. 'An interesting bargain you strike. Why should I accept responsibility for the nethicite when all I want is the airship?'

'Because I'm asking you to,' Zecht said. 'Why else did you think I boarded this airship, knowing who you were?'

To his credit, Balthier scarcely blinked. 'Not a guess, then.'

'A guess,' Zecht contradicted. 'A dare, of both fates and gods! After Nabudis I refused to follow my command to Nalbina. For all my service, for the suffering I dream, I was consigned to ferry service instead, a duty as distasteful as my last, in which I am directed to collect the Bhujerban nethicite stockpile and deliver it to the front at Nalbina. Then I heard the rumour of your actions, and—I dared to contemplate another course than that which the Empire would put me. I dared both fates and gods and dreams, to change.'

'No deal,' Balthier said, with a swallow dry enough to be audible. 'Your game profits me nothing. I am no hero, Magister, to take on that much responsibility. You want your magicite gone, go dump it yourself.'

From beneath heavy lashes, Fran glanced up, unreadable.

'I had so hoped.' Zecht sighed. 'There was a time when skypirates were honourable to match their pride.'

Balthier sneered. 'Enough history, old man. Rikken, get the Bangaa and go disarm his men and tie them, then bring them aboard. We'll take that airship,' he bowed at Zecht, 'in the time-honoured, old-fashioned piratical way.'

Zecht turned his gaze to me, dark eyes bright, haunted. 'If it is a simple matter of profit not meeting the risk, skypirates, there is a sweetener.'

Balthier threw me a wink as Zecht turned to his men aboard the YPA-G84, calling instructions:

'Do not board. Activate the mechanism.'

Then Zecht showed us what it was that truly made the single, under-armed, under-shielded, under-staffed Fighter Class YPA-G84 the perfect airship for the pick-up and delivery of a lethal, invaluable cargo of nethicite.

In blatant disbelief, we watched as the YPA -G84 disappeared from sight.

The perfect airship for a skypirate.

'Interesting,' Balthier said, without a waver. 'A large-scale version of a vanish spell? Nono could tell you many of our speculations along those lines. Warped light, a second skystone bent to alternate purpose than ascent, all very logical; except it does nothing to hide the a ship on a screen. The mass is still there.'

'It is not,' Zecht said. 'Check your navigator's console.'

'Rikken, get above, look at the display, tell me if the ship's vanished from that, too.'

Rikken raced, bare heels ringing his ascent on the ladder, the echoes there even as he called down the affirmation from the cockpit.

Nono leaned from the engine deck, paws working on the rail. 'The world's first truly invisible ship.'

I was surprised Balthier withheld from salivating.

Instead, he shook his head in a fair display of sorrow. 'You fly on Imperial business. You had a change of heart mid-flight. Then you sought us out. You could have flown under your invisibility wholly, we never would have seen you. What the hell do you really want?'

Zecht took a shaky breath. 'Since I have made my decision to depart from Archadia's service, I have been forced to improvise. I am appealing to your better nature—'

'My better nature currently has your hand around her throat.'

Zecht gave a sigh, one that sounded truly regretful. Fran's ears brushed the deck as she leaned against his grasp.

'I was ordered to collect the nethicite, then deliver it to the front. If I do not do so according to schedule, the matter will arrive by alternative methods. If you do not take my offer, then do not take my ship. I would take the nethicite to the ocean myself.'

'A fine tale.' Balthier arched an eyebrow. 'I'm moved. I still don't trust you, I still want your airship, and I still want you to let my partner go.'

Fran lifted her head. Zecht's fingers, at her throat yet, were lax. When she spoke, it was husky with strain. 'What harm can it do to believe, even without trust? We have risked more for less for—others.'

I heard the unsaid. For Margrace, she meant; but the YPA-G84 offered more for a skypirate's freedom than any of Margrace's promises had.

Spite or sorrow made me speak. 'Not mentioning the Archadians have like taken advantage of their invisibility to come around and put us firm in their sights.'

Balthier waved a distracted hand. 'The gangway's there, it would have dropped if they'd moved.'

Zecht laughed, without humour. 'Well observed. Do not trust me, then; but some deals do not require trust. Only participation, for profit. Do we have a deal, Balthier?'

He shook his head. 'Convince me that your change of heart is real.'

For some reason, Zecht turned to me, his eyes grave.

'Nabudis,' Zecht said, sonorous. 'I walked through the ruins, after, but could not find a single living soul. I could have pulled my heart from this living sleeve of flesh, had I not been surrounded by my men, those still living, drawing away from me as though I should not have the right to stand amongst them. It should never have been done, the nethicite should never have been so used. I was the one that ordered it done. When all others refused, I was the one who fired the blast. And so I run, in shame and disgrace, but even in my shame and disgrace I cannot run without exploiting every opportunity the fates throw in my path, for sabotaging what Archadia would do with the cursed stone.'

Helpless before that stare, I lowered my gun.

* * *

'Let Fran go.'

'You haven't agreed,' Zecht said.

Balthier narrowed his eyes. 'Tell me your plan, before I commit to it.'

'Tis a matter of improvisation, again. I did not think of this until I sighted you on my screens.'

'I'm familiar with improv. Continue.'

'At precisely sixteen hundred hours tomorrow, an Archadian base on a large purvama in Bhujerba's shadow will be expecting the YPA -G84 to arrive and assume possession of the nethicite. After accepting the cargo, we will withdraw. In a location inconvenient to the base or any patrolling airships, I will fall foul of an engagement with the mysterious disappearing Rozarrian destroyer. Battle will ensue, and my final call will transmit the knowledge that the Rozarrian destroyer had bettered us. Our airships will both disappear, including their crews; Archadian intelligence will assume the nethicite has gone straight to fuel the Rozarrian war efforts.'

Balthier nodded at key places within the tale. 'Good enough, for as long as we have accurate intelligence on the location of the patrols. You could, of course, be laying us in for an ambush.'

'I could also have destroyed you outright, with my airship's greater speed. I have not.'

A shrug, noncommittal. 'Let Fran go.'

I should have distrusted this Magister, but having looked into his eyes, I could not. There was a grief in there that could have devoured me as well as him. This man had destroyed a capital city. He swayed with drunkenness, with the need to escape, yet the form of his escape was not the typical oblivion. Even destroying himself, he fought to find ways to do so which would make some recompense for his actions.

I wondered, then, how Margrace would feel, having played his small part in bringing Archadia to the use of the nethicite. Whether Margrace would ever acknowledge he had played a part.

With some shock, I realised that I could not be fully absolved of my involvement, either.

'Balthier, agree with him. I think we should do this.'

Balthier looked at me, expressionless, then at Zecht. 'You'll be wanting a cut, I suppose?'

Zecht flinched violently. 'No. Apart from a wish to—'

'Disappear,' I said. 'Balfonheim is a good place to start again, Magister.'

'A city of men without countries, pirates of the sea and of the sky.  
There would be few who would fain lay down their lives for a friend, let alone an Empire.'

'And you think that's a bad point?' I asked.

The ex-Judge Magister grinned at me then, with the same unexpectedly boyish delight that wreathed Balthier's face at the most unexpected of times.

'I have a question,' I asked. 'Seeing as you have as much fondness for bluffing as Balthier does. Do you truly think the Archadian fleet is going to believe that a single aimless Rozarrian destroyer succeeded in taking down an airship fast enough to spin rings around the world, and that can turn itself invisible?'

'As I understand it,' Zecht said, 'the Archadian fleet is currently of the belief that this single Rozarrian destroyer can also turn invisible.'

Zecht released Fran's throat. Moving slowly, he offered her a hand up, and an apologetic bow. 'Your good will gesture, Balthier.'

'My partner,' Balthier said. 'If Fran doesn't want to do this, ex-Magister, then you're dead now, good will or no.'

Slowly, Fran paced to her place at Balthier's shoulder, eyes keen on the newest contractor of the Maenad's services.

'Fran's a good judge of men,' Balthier added, with an inflection more like his usual self.

Fran turned a look on her partner more rueful than dismayed, fingers touching her throat. 'How shall we deny the opportunity holding us fast, for good or ill? The hare shall follow the hound.'

'And so, the future is ours,' Balthier said.


	11. Only One Life

The weather cleared by the following morning. I had prime view of the stunning sky, installed beside Judge Magister Zecht on the incredible disappearing airship, accompanying him towards his final rendezvous on behalf of the Archadian Empire.

Needless to say, I was not at ease.

At labour in the YPA -G84's hold, Balthier left the Maenad in Fran's hands, Rikken and Nono with her, assurance against the likelihood of Rinok and Gijuk turning on them. Along with himself, he had brought Raz and Bwagi aboard. The Archadian crew had been likewise split, half lodged in the Maenad's hold, weaponless, bound by Zecht's word.

The split contributed to my unease, but was not the source. The origin was sitting across from me, teacup cradled in a large hand.

'A top-up?' Zecht offered his silver flask, of which he had made ample use himself.

Here I was, on the vessel of my twice-over enemy, a Magister and an Archadian, drinking his brandy-laced tea.

'Thank you,' I declined as gracefully as I could.

The very presentation of his fallibility inclined me to trust him. Margrace's schemes were blank, devious, his motivations suspect. That Zecht admitted his own failures and then made recompense meant something. Could I not see myself in him?

I thought back to Margrace's long-ago words: in the company of prestigious runaways, I was one of them.

Zecht inclined his head over his cup. I took the opportunity to steal a study of him. He was not a typical Archadian, for certain. Rumours surrounded those raised from the ranks of Judges to the Emperor's personal elite: Judge Magisters had no family, no connections or allegiances to distract them from their vows to the Archadian Emperor. They were the only military unit that answered to the Emperor alone, without involvement in the Imperial Senate.

Zecht saw me watching and smiled. 'You have doubts?'

I shrugged.

'But you are worried, are you not?'

'If anyone should be worried, Magister, I would think it would be you.'

He agreed. 'Yet even my failure will disrupt this consignment of nethicite. Any impediment to the Empire is a victory.' Such sadness in Zecht's eyes. 'I am a military man, milady. There is honour in war, I feel you believe that too, honour to fight for a claim or for a matter of freedom. Even honour in the brave and mad involvement of your skypirate captain and his crew, for all the subversion of his intentions. Yet what occurred in Nabudis was—'

'Otherwise.'

'Otherwise,' he said, relieved to be spared the search for a word. 'The past shackles me to this path.'

'I shall take you at your word, Magister.' I leaned forward, over the small well-set table between us. 'I wonder, though, how did you convince your crew to cede so quietly? Were they at Nabudis also, or are they simply lacking in traditional Archadian patriotism?'

He looked pained. 'Patriotism rings hollow when there is little enough to believe in. Archadia has long been champion of freedom—freedom and order, hand in hand, and opportunity for all to exceed themselves. In the course of this flight, myself and my crew have discussed the merit of blind obedience, and often.' Zecht shook his head. 'Archadia has changed, and I fear that little remains to bring about the country's moral regeneration.'

'Surely some of your men were reluctant?'

Zecht shrugged. 'Who will gainsay a Magister?'

'Anyone might, when they realise you're not exactly a Magister any more.' I smiled. 'With authority comes obedience.'

After studying me with as much intentness as I had used upon him, he grinned. 'Why is the blind affirmation of my crew so important to you?'

I could hardly tell him that the thought of two Balthiers cruising the skies, winning away all allegiances from home and hearth in favour of their odd, compelling charisma, was too terrible to contemplate.

'There was one dissenter,' Zecht said, abruptly. 'Such was his faith in the Archadian cause that we felt it necessary to test the wings of his faith. So you see, there remain only eleven unpatriotic criminals in my association,' he smiled, 'not including yourself.'

The rest of the tea passed in easy conversation, well away from the topic of Empire. The hour of the nethicite exchange approached soon enough, marked by the sharp angle of sun through the porthole of Zecht's tiny cabin.

Then Balthier was at the door, wiping grease from his hands with a soapy rag, ready to for his turn on this informal watch on our Magisterial prize. 'A particularly nice set-up on the engine deck, y'honour. My commendation.'

'The shipwrights would be pleased to know.' Zecht smiled and rose, bowing me out.

Then Zecht called after me, sharply, 'You've forgotten something.'

I turned, even as Balthier made a disgruntled sound.

Zecht held my gun at the ready, aimed at us.

Without further suspense, he eased the cocking handle into a safe position, then tossed it to me. 'Criminal negligence, milady, leaving an armed weapon within my reach.'

I caught it, then pulled the clip clear to display the empty rings. 'Call it a test, Magister.'

Humour flickered at the corners of his mouth. 'I see I am not alone in my deceits.'

'You passed, by the way,' Balthier said, dryly, as he stepped by me to take his seat. 'Do I smell brandy?'

'Alas,' Zecht said, 'it appears I have run dry.'

I hid my grin at the obvious lie. So Zecht would share with me, if not with his old Imperial comrade Balthier.

* * *

The pickup point proved to be a bleak little purvama, constantly shadowed by the floating isle of Dorstonis. Somewhere above us, the sky-city Bhujerba's overarching presence starved for the nethicite we would collect here.

Without room to land, Balthier brought in the YPA -G84 to holding, firmly fixing a gangway to the sandy edge of the rock. Even the sky seemed stripped of interest, with nothing around except the roar of air ripped to shreds on the underside of corrugated rock.

At least there were no blind-eyed serpents.

I communicated with the Maenad, ensuring she stayed in easy proximity, hidden. Balthier and I kitted ourselves in full Archadian armour. Balthier's actions as he prepared himself seemed dogged by anticipation, anxiety almost, caught up as we were in this desolation, this constant roaring sound. We were to flank Zecht during this meeting, the Judges to his Magister.

Balthier looked horrendously apt in his Judge's garb, even without the helm. With the final mask in place, he was mindless enough to have truly been a piece of Archadia's military machinery.

We marched across rock blasted to a grey, shrieking sand until we reached the sole manufacted portion of the island, a thickly made platform marked with a single Bhujerban flag, whipped to shreds.

As the wait grew interminable, Zecht said, loudly, 'I have wondered, Balthier, what it was that made you leave Archadia's bosom.'

After some time, Balthier replied. 'Personal reasons. Certainly nothing as melodramatic as redemption. Path to ruin, that, without any measure to judge your successes.'

'How desperately mercantile,' Zecht said, mocking. His helm tilted in my direction. 'Yourself, milady?'

'I was born in Balfonheim,' I said. 'After long service with Rozarria, perhaps I was simply overdue a return home.'

'How came you to be flying under Rozarria's flag again?'

I hesitated. 'I made a mistake, on my last venture for Rozarria, and fled with the task unfinished. This repays that, I suppose.'

'It always comes down to a matter of payment,' Zecht acknowledged. 'Balfonheim seems a good place for that. A matter of worth. Would that we could have put a value on our commitment to a cause.'

'It's not worth it,' Balthier said, eventually. 'I learned that lesson early on.'

No one spoke for some time after that, not even Balthier. Ten minutes, half an hour.

'This is the right place?' I had to ask.

Zecht inclined his affirmation.

'You think maybe, they've fallen foul of something—'

Then, suddenly, they were there. They had been there all along, ranks of Bhujerbans, dour, rising direct from the rock itself.

Looking at the dark expressions and hollow cheeks on those men and women, of a culture known for its hospitality, I realized that Archadia had truly succeeded in this blockade: the last of the mine's providence came without Bhujerba's willing involvement.

The Bhujerbans busied themselves removing what was an impeccable example of terrestrial camouflage, revealing crates of nethicite, piece by piece.

'There.' It wasn't relief in Zecht's voice; I struggled to name what it was. Eagerness, perhaps, a desire to get this over with, now that he had committed himself to this path.

'About time,' Balthier breathed.

There were Archadians moving amongst the Bhujerbans, Judges too, standing shining and useless amongst the activity. A small cohort formed, beckoning Zecht closer. As I took a step to keep at his side, a curt disruption made it clear that Zecht was to approach alone.

The first thing he was asked to do was to remove his helm.

Standing there in our Archadian garb, surrounded by disgruntled Bhujerban miners, our position felt tenuous enough to creak. Zecht could inform the Judges now as to who we were, and those guns and swords would turn against us.

The situation became even more fraught with the sudden appearance of more Archadian troops from the other side of the purvama, armed for long range battle. Two Remoras followed the column, with a final Fighter Class so horribly lethal looking I almost failed to identify it as a something as simple as a modified Remora.

Balthier went rigid at my side.

'What is it?'

'The range of the guns on that last hyped-up Remora! Not to mention the tracking. Overkill. It's a fast one.'

I said, 'The YPA -G84 is faster.'

I could almost feel Balthier's grin radiating through the helm. 'We'll have some fun proving that.'

'Expecting something to go wrong?'

'Of course. Just don't ask me what.'

Zecht and the Judges saluted at each other, stepped back, and let the Bhujerbans commence their carrying, crate after crate of this last existing natural nethicite, to where the YPA -G84 waited, hatches wide.

The hyped-up Remora trundled past and assumed a position where it could have fired into the ship's hold as easily as into the sky. Her guns turned, giving me with a moment of terror as I stared down the double barrels of the monstrosity.

The loading went at a fair pace.

Paperwork passed between Zecht and the Judges, along with the genial conversation that laced every liaison between Archadians. Zecht made it clear that the ground crew of Bhujerbans was not to fraternise with any aboard the ship, so the unloading took place in relative quiet. After some time, even the roaring purvama air faded to white noise.

The number of crates were such even the fast pace seemed a crawl.

Cool as ice, Zecht sent Balthier back into the ship to fetch unfolding chairs and a table, the better to host conversation with the supervising Judge. Zecht shared his second round of tea and sandwiches for the day with a rotation of Judges, his forehead dry, his wrist steady.

Balthier poured round after round of tea, with a gracious curve to his gauntleted wrist, and a quirk to his lips that I could feel without seeing.

At sunset, the two ordinary Remoras took themselves away; not, unfortunately, to leave the purvama altogether, but to station themselves to guard our takeoff. It still eased some of the concern, the weight, having less of a lethal presence within shouting distance.

Thirty minutes after sunset, the YPA -G84's hold was resoundingly full.

Balthier poured the guest Judge a last, gracious cup of tea.

In the next ten minutes, the Judge had been shot a great many times, by the floor mounted guns in the Maenad's hold.

* * *

Balthier finished pouring the Judge his tea, and returned to our respectfully maintained distance.

He was muttering, 'If that bastard doesn't stop talking down at me like that —'

'You'll what, present him with your credentials?'

Balthier turned to retort. Over his shoulder, I saw it coming.

The Maenad had tailed us close, ready for feigning the battle in which the YPA -G84 would broadcast her final cries. To see her here, screens up so the ship itself appeared a grinning, gap-toothed caricature of itself, felt like a nightmare come to life.

In the hold, at the largest of the floor-mounted assault guns, was Ba'gamnan, jaw wide and muscular legs set as he turned the gun to our table.

I threw myself at Balthier even as he stood there swearing, dragging him behind the nearest rocky prominence in our quest for cover.

I could well imagine what had happened.

Afraid, in a manner of speaking, of Balthier and Fran's vengeance but likewise terrified of her dominant sib, Rinok would not have attempted to open Ba'gamnan's door. She would have had no concerns about sliding a file under his door, though. With due diligence, Ba'gamnan would have applied himself and the file to the door's locking mechanism.

When the door eventually wheezed open, Fran could have been walking past with her usual stealthy tread. The Bangaa and the Viera would have stared at each other long, silent moments, before Ba'gamnan discarded the last of his common sense and jumped her.

In the hasty struggle, they tumbled along the corridor, toppling to the engine deck even amidst Nono's shouted curses. Staggering up against the mezzanine's rail, gasping for breath, Ba'gamnan turned, glanced down into the hold and discovered something else:

The Maenad now held a full compliment crew of armoured Archadians.

'The bastard's betrayed us,' Ba'gamnan cried. 'That damned skypirate was an Archadee' all along!'

It would not have taken much convincing to draw Rinok and Gijuk into the fight. Perhaps the three of them took Fran out together, or they threatened some portion of the Maenad's irreplaceable enginework. Whatever the case, the Archadians would have been small help, weaponless. The Bangaa crew of three had taken over the Maenad.

—which swooped in again, Ba'gamnan visible in the hold, Rinok clear as day in on the upper gun deck, lurking behind the missile launcher, her toothy grin wide with glee.

'Balthier,' I hissed, spitting sand and flinching from our increasingly pockmarked rock, 'did you not think to tell Ba'gamnan about this small diversion of yours?'

'I'm supposed to think of everything now, am I?' Balthier flinched away from the next arc of bullets, his armour scraping mine. He wrenched off his helm, turning to tug at mine before I took over the task. 'Fran's going to kill me.'

'If she's not dead already!'

Balthier actually grinned, and touched fist to his chest. 'She can't be, Feathers. I'm still breathing, aren't I?'

The Maenad swung about again, unsteady in the updraft, even as Balthier grabbed my arm and yanked me into a run. Bullet arcs chopped fountains of dust in our wake, chips of rock as lethal as the bullets flecking our armour, both a protective and a weighty bane. The Archadian Remoras hastened closer, the Archadian soldiers scrambling, shouting as they regrouped at a distance. Of the Bhujerbans, I could see no sign. The miners melted away as readily as they had appeared.

Rinok released a volley from the missile launcher.

The hyped-up Remora, guns pivoting about, blossomed into a rising ball of orange. There came a scream of agony, the blinding silhouette of a man spread-eagled against the flame.

Through it all, I ran alongside Balthier, realizing belatedly that he was acting true to form, and running towards the source of death instead of away.

The purvama edge chopped up further as Gijuk appeared to take a gun beside Ba'gamnan, apparently giving up his attempts at piloting for a lost cause. Caught in mad glimpses as we ran, a special chaos took place in the hold.

Nono held an oversized wrench, standing to defend the engine's exposed parts if the Bangaa three approached. The core boiled out with steam, several bullet punctures through the water reservoirs covering the scene with an unhealthy, sweaty sheen. Zecht's Archadians were unwilling to die without a fight. They made weapons from what they could scavenge around the hold, and were approaching Ba'gamnan and Gijuk.

The Bangaa sibs were inconsiderate of the Maenad's hull integrity, willingly turning the guns from the shore to the hold, bullets ripping through the deck, sending the Archadians scattering for cover.

Unfortunately, the only cover found was behind the stacked crates, which held large quantities of ammunition.

Very shortly, I thought, dazed and distantly, a bullet would surely hit the crate containing the missiles for the launcher above.

Towards all of this, Balthier ran, dragging me with him.

'That's my bloody ship, bloody lizards! Oh come on, Feathers, don't give me that look, it's likely the safest place—'

Despite—or perhaps because of—our Archadian armour, we were not welcomed by Zecht's traitors. Balthier ducked the first blow even as I kicked the Archadian to the deck.

The whole affair was further confused when a contingent of the purvama guard also made the Maenad's dubious safety, startled to find their own kind there. Caught between the Bangaa and the startled Archadians soldiers, Zecht's traitors threw themselves into the attack on their ex-compatriots.

Hand to hand was always brutal.

Balthier shoved me towards Zecht's men, wild-eyed. 'Take back the ship!'

'How do you expect me to—'

Between one breath and the next, Zecht was at my side, panting, great sword aloft. 'Your ship's crew is less than sanitary, skypirate! Mutineers galore!'

'If you won't, Feathers, he can! Zecht, take back the Maenad!'

The ex-Magister grinned, eyes absorbing the tangled chaos before him. 'At last, an honest battle!'

'Fran!'

As the last thing I heard Balthier say, it was fitting.

She was there, too, out of nowhere, suddenly in the depths of the fight. Wrenching Ba'gamnan away from the assault gun, rolling free of the claws he swung at her exposed abdomen. Roaring, Ba'gamnan called Gijuk even as Fran thrust her dagger deep into his gut.

Gijuk turned, himself and his assault gun, to his brother's call.

Fran arched and staggered, shot in the back.

Balthier had wings. He must have had, to cross the distance between him and his partner untouched, rising above the morass. Sword drawn, Balthier struck, no pretence made of a fight when he aimed to disable with his first and only blow. The vicarious, vengeful splash of Bangaa blood arched across the deck.

The assault gun fell unmanned.

Bullets tore into the purvama, the recoil spinning the gun about, back into the hold. Even as I followed the trail of bullets to the unsuspecting stockpile of missiles that awaited their ignition, I saw Balthier in my periphery.

With lean efficiency, arms out, he was there to catch Fran before she had time to fall beyond one knee.

Their silhouettes were enveloped in the explosion taking apart the Maenad. That was the last I saw of them, falling from the open hold.

Steam, dust, pain, and blackness. I was unforgivably angry.


	12. Epilogue: These Newly Minted Skypirates

Archadia lost a small fortune in that last battle: millions worth of nethicite, one Judge Magister, one prototype airship, one prototype skystone engineered for invisibility, never recovered.

A day later, a Bhujerban sweep arrowed in to the Maenad's floating wreckage, and pulled me from the water. The Bhujerbans insisted I had been found draped securely over a large section of one of the screens, as if deliberately posed.

I was held by the Bhujerban sweep for exactly three days, which was how long the blockade lasted. Then, political winds changed direction.

The Archadian cohort accepted Bhujerba's claims that their mines had no further magicite to offer Archadia, and withdrew their forces.

The withdrawal seemed an exchange for Bhujerba's willingness to support Archadia's version of events surrounding the kingdom of Dalmasca's unequivocal surrender. Bhujerba's voice on Archadia's side did much to quiet queries at the Holy Mount—as to how Nabudis had been so thoroughly destroyed. The idea that Archadia could manufact nethicite, independent from mines and resource, like as not terrified the Holy Mount.

The Rozarrian Empire was again left without a righteous leg to stand on, should they try to attack Archadia.

Despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the ambitious and unwise Balfonheim Liaison, Balfonheim itself survived, independent and autonomous.

Some battles are won by degrees, however incremental. We won this day simply through virtue of still being alive.

Margrace remained in Balfonheim long enough to reward me. Medals, freedom, and the salary I was due to draw. 'A brilliant strategy,' he complimented me, when I'd told him about the nethicite, the switch of ships, the circumstances surrounding the loss of our brave and stalwart crew.

Then he tried to talk me back into Rozarria's welcoming fold. Margrace had never let his little birds go so easily. Since last we met, something had changed in me.

I assured Margrace I had no desire to return to Rozarria's rather restrictive bosom, and commenced trying to lead my own life, as it should have been before, as a true citizen of Balfonheim's wild, selfish, wonderful freedoms.

The months passed.

Sitting one brilliantly gilded afternoon at the Whitecap's scarred tables, I overheard a conversation from the table just beyond my shoulder. The voices held an ingrained familiarity, stirring loose memories of that final battle; one never forgot a shout from a battlefield.

I turned, slowly, sipping my cider. Discreet enquiries had already determined that our Bangaa cohort had also survived our fatal fall, being collected and imprisoned by a passing Archadian Fighter that had somehow missed my own unconscious form—but I had not expected to hear these voices again.

'—an odd circumstance, our meeting here,' Rikken said.

'Tis a funny old world all around,' Raz said, agreeably.

Rikken nodded at the third man at their table. 'Further proof, in fact: my last charter was with a Cruiser scouting beyond the greater purvamas. We'd heaved to on a likely island to deposit a fair bit of loot, as yon skypirates are want to do, waiting for the market price in serpentine skins to go up to a feasible trade rate—'

'Our captain was a fortune teller,' Raz added, 'predicting a soon to be shortage of the product.'

Their companion rumbled, with an amused savvy: 'Your captain had just obliterated the supply of the skins, and was waiting for the price to rise?'

'You ken how skypirates play the market,' Raz said, grinning around his fangs.

'To get to this purvama, we take the most secretive route you can imagine.' Rikken flexed his fingers around his mug, warming to his tale. 'Taking every chance we can to ensure that there's no one following us through the tangled maze. There and back we go, and back again to collect the skins. Only to find the whole supply's currently in the process of being raided!'

'Alas,' Raz said. 'We were dramatically outnumbered.'

Their companion looked into his frothy mug. 'You had a crew of five, you say?'

'Eight,' Rikken said. 'But the majority were green, mind, apart from me.'

'What numbers were against you?'

Raz replied, purring with humour, 'There were two of them.'

Their companion twigged to the undercurrent. '—But what a pair, am I correct?'

'You ken, the lean, cocky type,' Raz said, approvingly. 'Too tall. The bloke was a lanky tosser, too.'

'The thing is,' Rikken said, solemn, 'their airship was unusual enough to draw the attention, a little damaged, some recent repairs and nasty welds clear along the starboard hold...'

'Dual-winged, I suppose?'

'Rather noticeable, that,' Rikken said.

'Even our captain swore he saw the airship disappear,' Raz added. 'Right there, from under his eyes.'

'With his full stock of serpentine skins, too.' Rikken snorted with the nonchalance of a mercenary paid for his presence, not by percentage.

Decided, I stood up, closed the brief distance between us, and hooked my stool under me. Nodded, at a surprised Rikken and Raz, then met Zecht's knowing, glittering gaze and smiled broadly.

'I hadn't expected to see you lot survive.' I scratched my chin. 'Particularly you. Particularly here.'

'Tis a habit,' Zecht said, dryly, 'and there is much to be said for what Balfonheim can offer a recovering survivor. I recall conversations between us along those lines.'

Lacking an array of cups before him, I could nevertheless smell his intent. Drowning his memories would not work for a man like our ex-Magister, the glint in his eye too knowing, too sharp, the pained humour still there as lifeboat through the grief.

'Oblivion?'

He shook his head, slow and careful. 'A new start, I should think. Where the sea breeze blows clear of Empire's coils, and a man can chance thinking for himself.'

'May I join you?'

'Certainly. I was about to suggest,' Zecht gestured at our two startled tablemates, 'that we raise a toast to a pair of absent friends.'

'I'd be delighted.'

He held out his hand, large and calloused. He smiled, a warm expression that, for all his grief, was not ill-practiced. 'Reddas. A pleasure to make your formal acquaintance.'

Without hesitation, I took his hand and shook it. 'Elza.'


End file.
